Are corduroys just jeans?

I say yes, because it's denim-like.

But wikipedia may say no.

Who’s got my back on this one?

Live Baby Live, Part 2

A very brief pictoral history of concerts I attended as seen through random photos off the internet featuring the back of my head.

Dismemberment Plan, Bowery Ballroom, New York, 25 July 2003


















Harvey Danger, Cafe Du Nord, San Francisco, 18 June 2004















The Go! Team, Metro, Chicago, 29 October 2005

Live Baby Live, Part 1

Over Spring Break, I decided to spend/waste my free time listing all the concerts I had been to in my lifetime. This was partially inspired by an absolutely brilliant set by Belle & Sebastian, but mostly because I completely blanked on certain shows and as an amateur historian, I couldn't let some of my most treasured memories fade without a fight. So, I thought I would share some of my favorite concert experiences from the past five years.

Most Intimate Show:
Thanksgiving/Vetiver/Joanna Newsom/Devendra Banhart, Kilby Court, Salt Lake City, 7 June 2004

Before Lindsay Lohan and the crack-addled albums which that relationship is sure to inspire, Devendra Banhart played Kilby Court, a garage that barely qualifies as a concert space. Nell and I (and Andy Nelson randomly) spent a beautiful summer evening listening to hushed folk narratives with a handful of other audience members circled around a firepit. Absurdly intimate, and absolutely magical.

Runner-Up:
Dresden Dolls, Eclectic Ballroom (!), Middletown, 6 February 2004

Who knew Amanda Palmer was a Wesleyan graduate and that she would perform two pieces she described as "bad" and "Wesleyan-specific" about her terrible time at our alma-mater? A year later the piano and drum duo would be playing omni-domes opening up for Nine Inch Nails, but somehow I don't think the parody of the Wesleyan Fight Song was a regular on their setlist.

Most Disappointing Concert:
Flaming Lips/Beck, Beacon Theater, New York, 31 October 2002

This was one of those ridiculous lineups that could only have been dreamt up in some indie-rock enthusiasts dirtiest masturbatory fantasy: not only were the Flaming Lips going to be opening for Beck, but they were going to be his backing band. My mind was set afire: what crazy variations and mutations was Wayne Coyne going to unleash on our young Beck Hanson's music? The answer: very little. The set was disappointingly routine and the momentum of the show was killed every time Beck played another one of his tiredly morose Sea Change tunes. For every "Devil's Haircut" there was at least a dozen songs of the "I Made A Mistake And Now I Want To Kill Myself" vein. No irony, no credibility - but, more importantly, no fun.

Runner-Up:
Sufjan Stevens, Lo-Fi Cafe, Salt Lake City, 28 July 2005

The only concert I have ever walked out on. Not because of Sufjan (although his soporific cheerleading routines didn't help) but due to the sweltering Lo-Fi Cafe. Imagine listening to Casimir Pulaski Day while steaming in a sauna. Sound pleasant?

Best Opening Band:
IMA Robot, Irving Plaza, New York, 11 October 2003

Okay. So perhaps IMA Robot are not going to bust-up the place like Rebecca and I thought they were, but fuck if they didn't absolutely blow Hot Hot Heat and the French Kicks (thanks for the hot tip Andrea!) completely out of the water. By 'Black Jetta' I was sold, jumping and dancing with two drunk Germans who were obviously on the know as they bolted after Alex Ebert and company left the stage. For about a half hour, I believed I was watching a musical revelation. I later saw IMA Robot open for Duran Duran, but the frenetic energy had all but evaporated. What happened?

Runner-Up:
Stereo Total, La Riviera, Madrid, 16 March 2002

Hint: If you are opening band, just play synth-laden tunes and you will probably get me dancing in no time. "Take Me To A Holiday Inn..."

Best Bookend to a Concert:
Slow Life and The Man Don't Give a Fuck, Super Furry Animals, Webster Hall, New York, 9 February 2004

53 utterances of the word 'fuck' and a 15 minute rave interlude. Good times.

Autographs Collected:
Two. Sahara Hotnights (ask Mark, they were really hot), The New Pornographers

Worst Audible Request at a Concert:
Fur Elise. Kronos Quartet, Crowell Concert Hall, Middletown, 28 April 2001

Concert Where I Feared For My Physical Well Being:
March of the Pigs. Nine Inch Nails, Coachella Music Festival, Indio, 1 May 2005

I don't think I have ever felt so much sheer force of pressure against my sternum. I have been to a lot of physical shows, but nothing will match the complete lack of control I felt when Trent Reznor incited the crowd to "STEP RIGHT UP MARCH PUSH" - and oh did the audience ever.

Times Taken Down At A Concert:
Once. Jimmy Eat World, Arena, Madrid, 31 January 2002

What was I doing at a Jimmy Eat World concert and how was I taken down by a rabid 13-year old girl? Please, don't ask.

Most Bizarre Marvel-Style Team-Up:
Yo La Tengo + Daniel Johnston, The Sundance Music Cafe, Park City, 26 January 2005

Artists I Am Still Dying to See:
Björk, Massive Attack, Underworld, Primal Scream, Gorillaz

Best Line-Up:
Mogwai/Rapture/Interpol/The Cure, Curiosa Festival, USANA Ampitheater, Salt Lake City, 18 August 2004

Best Single Song:
Transmission, New Order, Coachella Music Festival, Indio, 1 May 2005

DANCE, DANCE, DANCE, DANCE, DANCE, TO THE RADIO.

Actual Titles from the Lost Soundtrack

The Eyeland
Hollywood and Vines
Crocodile Locke
Departing Sun
Thinking Clairely
Monsters Are Such Innnteresting People
Locke'd Out Again
Kate's Motel
Shannonigans
Booneral

Ulysse Dôme

Last weekend marked my sixth trip to Vegas in as many years and my tenth visit lifetime, but it is still hard to know what exactly to think about the city. Any attempts at intellectualization are bound to run up against the tired concept of hyperreality and it is difficult to relate the sheer spectacle of the experience: the city is one gigantic optical enigma where nothing scales appropriately.

Over the past decade alone, Vegas has undergone dramatic changes. I remember walking the Strip with my father, back during city's rather un-halcyon days, collecting coin buckets from all the casinos - a relic of the days when gambling was the primary attraction. [On Sunday when I scored a cool $2.60 from the nickel slots, my cashing out entailed handing a print out receipt to a cashier; I didn't even have the option of pulling the lever.] Most of the iconic landmarks of the city are recent additions: the Bellagio, the Venetian, Mandalay Bay, New York New York, Paris Las Vegas, the Aladdin, and the striking new $2.7 billion Wynn, have all been built in the last ten years. The primary catalyst for this great transformation of the Vegas topography was the installation of Cirque Du Soleil's first permanent standing show - Mystère.

At ten years, Mystère is certainly showing signs of its age. It lacks the technical marvel of Kà, the overt sexuality of Zumanity, and the emotional resonance of O, but it still packs the one sentiment that only Cirque du Soleil can provide: awe. The show garbs itself in the semiology of the universal through syncretic iconography and indecipherable world music, but I think its most effective currency is wonder - a transcendental feeling that does not seem to me all that far removed from the sublime.

And in a world of overexposure and in a city of hyper-sensation, that is truly something.

Netflix Two Cents: Amarcord

Amarcord (1973)

Verdict: The man, Roger Ebert, said it best: this film contains images "so inexplicable and irreproducible that all the heart can do is ache with gratitude."

... Death: "Gentlemen!"

SCENE 2. FLIGHT 0629. A plane.

Enter CHILI'S, LOGAN, and Steward.

CHILI'S

[Aside to LOGAN intently trying to read a book] Where are you FROM? I am from LAKE HAVASU CITY. What you haven't HEARD of it? After the LONDON BRIDGE began falling down, ROBERT MCCULLOCH bought the bridge for 2.4 MILLION DOLLARS and flew it out to ARIZONA in 1971. I can't stand living in the DESERT because I have ATOPIC ECZEMA. Want to see my WOUNDS? I am a MANAGER at CHILI'S, so usually I have to wear GLOVES, but as you can see my HANDS don't BLEED as much when I use moisturizer. You look SICK! [Pulls out an "Air Sickness Bag"] Do you NEED to USE this?

Exeunt.

Death, Gentlemen?

SCENE 1. FLIGHT 2600. A Public Place.

Enter THREE BACHELOR PARTIES, of the house of Sigma Phi Delta, armed with Crown and Coke. The 36 year-old psychiatrist at the WINDOW wisely prescribes herself some VALIUM and promptly passes out.

FOUR hours and NINE drinks later (not to mention the THIRTY-some bags of peanuts that were thrown in flight hitting both the ELDERLY and the CRIPPLED) "BAGMAN" looks to LOGAN intently trying to read a book.

BAGMAN

Yo, Kurt [Cobain]. Did you seriously just read all SIXTY of those pages on the plane or did you skip around?

BAGMAN'S FRIEND

[from the back of the plane] We're going DOWN! [pause] Just kidding folks!

Exeunt.

Konichiwa Bitches!

Thesis is done and I am Audi 5000. I am off to Vegas for Bacchanalian orgies and the like, before stopping in Slick City to get my Morm on. If you suckers are really lucky, maybe Mark and I will do another tag-team Point/Counterpoint.

How about it: Brandied Cumquats [+/-]

Could this post be any more obnoxious? Yes.

a cock and bull story

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is, perhaps, my favorite novel; its narrative heir, Diderot's Jacques le fataliste et son maître, the reason I applied to the College of Letters.

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From: The Dude
Subject: RE: Racecar Redux
Date: January 17, 2005 4:45:15 AM CST
To: David Martin, Anne Fenton, Sara Mirsky, Dave Lievens, Megan Brown, Ron Ghatan

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0423409/

but how will they film the blank page?

------------

When I first heard word over a year ago that Michael Winterbottom was directing a movie adaptation of Tristram Shandy, I was thrilled. When I discovered that Steve Coogan was starring, I was ecstatic. Surely if any cinematic duo was going to attempt to film the 'infamously unfilmable novel' [although doesn't this apply to practically every high modernist work?], Winterbottom and Coogan were the team to bank on [I should also include writer Frank Cottrell Boyce on the roster]. There was the potential for it to be a disaster, but like all of Winterbottom's film, that didn't necessarily mean that it was going to be uninteresting.

Yet the seeming improbable has happened: in all unlikeliness, Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story is jejune and, I hate to say, terribly safe.

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“Zounds!” cried Phutatorius after a hot chestnut rolled onto his lap. Fired by such a profane oath, a heated debate followed. Mythogeras was fully convinced that it was divine retribution, God condemning Phutatorius for his filthy and obscene treaties de Concubinis. Gastriphere recalled that Yorick never had a good opinion of the treatise and deduced that Yorick must have chucked the chestnut in a sarcastical fling. During his retelling of these events, Tristram Shandy does not offer us his opinion, but merely muses, “It is curious to observe the triumph of slight incidents over the mind: - What incredible weight they have in forming and governing our opinions, both of men and things, - that trifles light as, shall waft a belief into the soul, and plant it immoveably within it, -that Euclid’s demonstrations, could they be brought to batter it in breach, should not all have power to overthrow it.” The chestnut debate would never be resolved; no manner of proof could ever persuade the observers on such a hot topic. Each observer analyzed the event from a particular perspective/hobby-horse and no manner of discourse could ever resolve their differences.

------------

The movie is certainly a hard one to criticize. It is fitted with all manner of anti-critic devices, the least of which is the actors commenting on the film after an on-screen screening. The on-screen cast and crew treat the adaptation process with such casual indifference that it almost seems over-zealous to react to the film with anything more than detached apathy. Not that I mind the breezy and genuinely unpretentious tone of the whole piece, but what is completely unforgivable is that they have created a truly dull film.

When I first heard the premise - that the narrative would careen carelessly away from the source text into a sort-of faux-meta-documentary, I was game. Certainly if you are going to film Tristram Shandy, there are going to be some textual divergences - the book practically begs for as much. The film, however, deviates from the plot along the most uninteresting and well-trooded of possible paths: the life celebrity. I am sorry, but I have seen it all before: the tedious art film vs. commercial movie debates, financiers vs. artistic vision, private vs. public, supportive wife vs. attractive assistant. And come on, Tristram Shandy was so so wildly inventive with its playful subversion of the novel format, and yet, the best Winterbottom could come with up in comparison was to turn the screen black while the characters are discussing filming the black page? That is just lazy writing and I hate it because the whole project comes off as quite frankly tristramaphobic and they try to hide it behind layers of irony and academic preening.

------------

A stranger riding on a dark mule enters the town of Strasburg. As he slowly travels, some of the citizens of the town argue over the true nature of his nose. Some think it is real, others think it is made of parchment or brass. As the debate cannot be resolved through means of discourse, the trumpeter’s and the inn-keeper’s wife propose to gain tangible proof by touching the nose. The stranger swears that his nose will never be touched except under the satisfaction of an unknown variable and leaves town. The town soon erupts in discourse; a buzzing chaos likened to a swarming of bees. Everyone investigates the problem through their particular hobby-horse, none of which leads to any conclusions. The naturalists argue over whether the body could sustain such an appendage. The logicians come upon a logic paradox; their argument rests on a petitio principii, a circular argument that has no conclusion. The civilians finally solved the riddle, but “the only objection to this was, that if it proved any thing, it proved the stranger’s nose was neither true nor false.” Soon the ecclesiastical authorities are entangled in the debate. The argument degenerates into two camps: the Nosarians and the Antinosarians who drape the conflict in the larger debate on “the extent and limitation of the moral and natural attributes of God.” The argument spirals out of control since “the less they understood of the matter, the greater was their wonder about it.” Since the central issue of both debates can never truly be known, they degenerate into arguments ove each side’s initial premise (hobby-horse/perspective). “The stranger’s nose was no more heard of in the dispute – it just served as a frigate to launch them into the gulph of school-divinity, and then they all sailed before the wind.” It is no longer about the nose, but the irreconcilable premises that each side takes for granted.

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This may seem terribly unfair, but Al Pacino did this film better in his severely overlooked film Looking For Richard. The difference is that Pacino and crew were not afraid of their text: they delved right in, exploring the contradictions, the intricacies of character, and the levels of emotional resonance.

Most depressing of all, Tristram Shandy translates terribly on screen. Despite the capriciousness of the narrative, the characters themselves exhibit a considerable amount of consistency. Half of the humor is built on the idiosyncratic nature of the characters and the eternal reoccurrence of their various quirks. Without establishing any sort of dynamic or rhythm - letting the audience acclimate themselves to Sterne's cadence - the humor of the adapted scenes falls flat and seems dated. Hell, I have even read the book and the filming of the last chapter was incomprehensible to me.

This is not to say that the film was a complete disaster. Steven Coogan and Rob Brydon are hilarious together, particularly in the end when they imitate Al Pacino [and I kind of secretly loved the fact that they completely wasted the most under-utilized actor working today: Jeremy Northam as Michael Winterbottom]. Still, I don't know if it is depressing or reaffirming that the best comedic moment of the entire movie was a bit of the ole slap-stick: Coogan rehearsing his scene with the hot chestnut.

I am probably being unnecessarily hard on the film. It just pains me that with a text as rich and as forgiving as The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Winterbottom and Boyce took no risks.

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Tristram Shandy does offer one piece of advice: “For my own part I never wonder at anything; - and so often has my judgment deceived me in my life, that I always suspect it, right or wrong…For all this, I reverence the truth as much as any body; and when it has slipped us, if a man will but take me by the hand, and go quietly and search for it, as for a thing we have both lost, and can neither of us do well without, - I’ll go to the world’s end with him: - But I hate disputes… For which reasons, I resolved from the beginning, That is ever the army of martyrs was to be augmented, - or a new one raised, - I would have no hand in it, one way or t’other.”

After all, “so long as a man rides his Hobby-Horse peaceably and quietly along the King’ high-way, and neither compels you or me to get up behind him, -pray, Sir, what have either you or I to do with it?”

Entertainment II

Identify the source of this sentence:

“There is no higher calling, nor greater reward, that democracy can offer an individual than the opportunity to stand up for fundamental freedom in trying times.”

I’ll give you two hints:

1) It’s current. It’s something I’ve read or heard in the last few weeks.

2) It comes from a well-known (and often reviled) source.

Now I’m going to give up the stupid little quiz format (it’s a little too pretentious).

The point of my leading questions is this: this is the opening of an ACLU “junk mail” package. “Signed” by ACLU President Nadine Strossen, the letter is “inviting” me to become a “Friend of Freedom” and donate to the ACLU (which is not, apparently, a non-profit as there’s small print that says my donation would NOT be tax-deductible, but I digress).

The point of my post is that... that... well.

Maybe I don’t have a point.

Oscar See Through Red Eye

Wow. I am stunned/sickened/disgusted Crash won Best Picture.

Q: Logan, why do you care?
A: Because I am an erstwhile Catholic; ergo I am a sucker for pomp and ritual.

Coming into tonight, I was actually glad Crash was nominated as it gave me a villian (besides Billy Bush - honestly, who allowed this ninny on my TV?) to root against during this year's ceremonies. Looking back over the decade's nominees, this is certainly not the first time the academy slavishly awarded [dear editor - can I used the word toadying somewhere in this sentence?] the most boring MOR movie of the year (see Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind, Chicago, Return of the King, and Million Dollar Baby), but it has been a long time since I remember a "film" of such portentous affectation taking home the top prize.

Don't believe the hype: Crash is not about racism. It is about the crisis of masculinity.

And if anything, it only further solidfied David Denby as the world's biggest misogynist asshole movie critic. Okay, I need to stop or I am going to lapse into Tourettes and I need to save all the hate I can for this May. (Still, WTF?)

The night was not a complete wash. God Bless my boy George Clooney who managed to pack more humor into a single facial expression than all of Jon Stewart's monologue combined. Jon Stewart did, however, have the best line of the night -

Martin Scorsese: 0 Oscars, Three 6 Mafia: 1 Oscar

Although the bigger dis would have been -

Martin Scorsese: 0, Akiva Goldsman: 1.

The one and only...

Our good friend "Brent" (sic) Goldsmith got a shout out on x96's Radio From Hell program today for one of his upcoming campaigns.

Apparently, "Brent" and his PETA friends are going to be burning an effigy of The Colonel at the world's first KFC, right here in Salt Lake City, sometime in the near future.

Maybe some information about this exciting event will appear here soon.

Either that or "Brent" can post a comment here with the date, address and other salient details.