a couple of mp3's from Neko Case
"I fell in love with Neko Case one night when, at a New Pornographers show, she settled a couple of song-requesting hecklers with the admonishment, 'Why don't you shut up, you hipster indie snobs!' "
Sunday, February 06, 2005
farewell John Vernon TV's Wojeck and a memorably complex villain in two of my very favorite movies "Point Blank" and "Charley Varrick".
interview with the great Anjelica Houston. I watched her in two of her best this week, "The Grifters" & "The Witches"...
more on Sam Johnson, and Gertrude Stein at Hotel Point
"What struck me in the Johnson, originally, is, rather, what he claims regarding Shakespeare and the “quibble”—by which he means “pun,” wherein so often impact’d lies the stark commencement of a (primarily) musical journey, the rightest thing Shakespeare does. Not so, says Johnson:
A quibble is to Shakespeare what luminous vapors are to the traveler; he follows it at all adventures; it is sure to lead him out of his way and sure to engulf him in the mire. It has some malignant power over his mind and its fascinations are irresistible. [Ain’t it always the case with music. See Orfeo. “Orfeo mest of ani thing / Lovede the gle of harping.” See the threnodies of the second liners “processionalizing” back along Magazine, they’s a parade an’ I gots to jine . . .] Whatever be the dignity or profundity of his disquisition, whether he be enlarging knowledge or exalting affection, whether he be amusing attention with incidents or enchaining it in suspense, let but a quibble spring up before him and he leaves his work unfinished. A quibble is the golden apple for which he will always turn aside from his career or stoop from his elevation. A quibble, poor and barren as it is, gave him such delight that he was content to purchase it by the sacrifice of reason, propriety, and truth. A quibble was to him the fatal Cleopatra . . .
Keats had it all wrong. Beauty and truth both scuttle along in music’s wake. And reasonable souls’ll always dispute that. Unreasonable souls’ll quibble."
"What struck me in the Johnson, originally, is, rather, what he claims regarding Shakespeare and the “quibble”—by which he means “pun,” wherein so often impact’d lies the stark commencement of a (primarily) musical journey, the rightest thing Shakespeare does. Not so, says Johnson:
A quibble is to Shakespeare what luminous vapors are to the traveler; he follows it at all adventures; it is sure to lead him out of his way and sure to engulf him in the mire. It has some malignant power over his mind and its fascinations are irresistible. [Ain’t it always the case with music. See Orfeo. “Orfeo mest of ani thing / Lovede the gle of harping.” See the threnodies of the second liners “processionalizing” back along Magazine, they’s a parade an’ I gots to jine . . .] Whatever be the dignity or profundity of his disquisition, whether he be enlarging knowledge or exalting affection, whether he be amusing attention with incidents or enchaining it in suspense, let but a quibble spring up before him and he leaves his work unfinished. A quibble is the golden apple for which he will always turn aside from his career or stoop from his elevation. A quibble, poor and barren as it is, gave him such delight that he was content to purchase it by the sacrifice of reason, propriety, and truth. A quibble was to him the fatal Cleopatra . . .
Keats had it all wrong. Beauty and truth both scuttle along in music’s wake. And reasonable souls’ll always dispute that. Unreasonable souls’ll quibble."
how to get Rodney Graham & Kim Gordon to leave your record store, etc.
"KG It's usually techno that drives me out.
RG Yeah, techno's not really my thing either.
KG The square sound waves. I just can't take it."
(thanks Chris)
"KG It's usually techno that drives me out.
RG Yeah, techno's not really my thing either.
KG The square sound waves. I just can't take it."
(thanks Chris)
Thursday, February 03, 2005
furious Vanity Fair cover autopsy--
"VF considers its Hollywood issue an event - "This is a very big issue for us so close to the Oscars," a PR told me - but actually, it is a desperate sight to make all feminists tremble. This is Disempowerment as she is dressed by Versace. On the first rung of the paper podium Kate, 29, Cate, 35, and Uma, 35, mug ferociously for the camera lens, trying to ease each other out of the viewers' eye in a nightmare of expensively dressed passive aggression. Uma has her hand resting on her neck and stretches out lasciviously in a parody of post-sexual languor. Cate has chosen to fling out her arms and toss her hair as if she's been caught on board a ship in a gale. She too is doing the repulsive yearning thing, which should only be done in secret, with a lover. Kate is arching her back and flinging her hand across her crotch, with enormous "No, don't fuck her - fuck me" eyes. And these three are the talented ones."
"VF considers its Hollywood issue an event - "This is a very big issue for us so close to the Oscars," a PR told me - but actually, it is a desperate sight to make all feminists tremble. This is Disempowerment as she is dressed by Versace. On the first rung of the paper podium Kate, 29, Cate, 35, and Uma, 35, mug ferociously for the camera lens, trying to ease each other out of the viewers' eye in a nightmare of expensively dressed passive aggression. Uma has her hand resting on her neck and stretches out lasciviously in a parody of post-sexual languor. Cate has chosen to fling out her arms and toss her hair as if she's been caught on board a ship in a gale. She too is doing the repulsive yearning thing, which should only be done in secret, with a lover. Kate is arching her back and flinging her hand across her crotch, with enormous "No, don't fuck her - fuck me" eyes. And these three are the talented ones."
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
Enough Appeasement
"As far as I can tell, America today is dominated by two "opposing" factions: the Incompetent Fascists of the Bush Right, and the Squeamish Fascists of the center-Right, the sort promoted in the Times. Which is why relying on mere rational argument is a cop-out—much as the Times' own credo of "objectivity" and centrism is a kind of cop-out on genuine journalism. If the lesson of Vietnam taught us one thing, it's that the Squeamish Fascists are in many ways more culpable than the Incompetent ones. When the Squeamish Fascists support war—as they did in Nam, Serbia and Iraq—the slaughter machine revs up. When the Squeamish Fascists squeam, as they're doing now, the long, slow, tortuous road to withdrawal and self-examination begins. Without the Squeamers, the Incompetent Fascists have a much more difficult time putting their plans into action."
"As far as I can tell, America today is dominated by two "opposing" factions: the Incompetent Fascists of the Bush Right, and the Squeamish Fascists of the center-Right, the sort promoted in the Times. Which is why relying on mere rational argument is a cop-out—much as the Times' own credo of "objectivity" and centrism is a kind of cop-out on genuine journalism. If the lesson of Vietnam taught us one thing, it's that the Squeamish Fascists are in many ways more culpable than the Incompetent ones. When the Squeamish Fascists support war—as they did in Nam, Serbia and Iraq—the slaughter machine revs up. When the Squeamish Fascists squeam, as they're doing now, the long, slow, tortuous road to withdrawal and self-examination begins. Without the Squeamers, the Incompetent Fascists have a much more difficult time putting their plans into action."
nice to see The Great Cham threaded all through Hotel Point lately...
"Endless admiration for Dr. Johnson’s “instinctive revolt against the intellectually modish.” What W. Jackson Bate labels as Johnson’s strengths as a critic of literature: “his refusal to be intimidated by the spurious ‘authority’ of fashion; his scorn of the ‘cant’ of those who are conditioned by attitudes simply because they are current; his tendency to walk immediately up to the tyranny of stock response in the prevailing mode of thinking, and to push directly through it in order to see what is on the other side.” (Empty verbiage, “cultural critique” in the form of old saw-blades whining, earnest old Panama hats, recticulated string bags of airy profundities, the usual pumpernickel and dough.)"
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
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