Beards stopped being cool yesterday, when I got rid of mine.
Saturday morning: books.
Notes on Gossip Girl: A One Act Play In The Form Of An Internet Dialogue
A: i’m watching gossip girl
it’s gotten so terrible
in this episode, there is an evil french priest
who looks like an abercrombie and fitch model
L: ew
A: yeah, it’s the worst plotting i’ve seen in a long time
not to mention acting, character development, etc.
all rufus does now is look at his ipad on the couch and chuckle like a
moron
seriously
he has done just that in like 3 different scenes
blair has her bachelorette party in a gay bar
which of course is not totally offensive
L: not at all
A: they play some incomprehensible drinking game in which she has to take a
shot for every ex-lover her friends are able to name
and proceeds to get really drunk
meanwhile, serena and dan are pretending to date to keep up internet
appearances
and chuck says things like, “there is a fine line between stalking and
surveillance”
because he is walking that fine line
and nate is trying to find out why his cousin (the congressman)
tried to kill him
i think that pretty much covers it
L: i haven’t watched it in forever so i don’t need a play by play
A: the evil french priest is trying to break up louis and blair, because he’s
fucking louis’s sister,
and somehow gets more power if blair is out of the picture?
all of this to say, it is completely insane and makes no sense
done
“Now I am in front of a rock. It splits. No, it is no longer split. It is as before. Again it is split in two. No it is not split at all. It splits once more. Once more no longer split, and this goes on indefinitely. Rock intact, then split, then rock intact, then split, then rock intact, then split, then rock intact, then split… .”
Stephen Colbert in 1986.
Parliament, “Together”
Proposed Musical Collaborations
andrew w.k.d. lang
Steve Winwoody Guthrie
Etta James Blake
Elliott & The Smiths
Elton John Coltrane
George Michael McDonald
Howlin’ Wolf Parade
Jon Brion Eno
(Nick) Drake
Method Man Man
Jay-Z.Z. Top
Beach Boyz II Men
Krisstopher Kross
Megadeth Cab for Cutie
Janet Jackson Browne
Weird Al Green
Lil Wayne Newton
Neil Young Jeezy
Ludachris Isaak
Neon Indian Jewelry
Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy Joel
Snoop Dog Night
(Jeff) Beck
Belle & Sebastian Bach
Bing Crosby, Stills & Nash
Jenny Lewis Armstrong
Ariel Pink Floyd
Sufjan Stevie Wonder
TV On The Radiohead
Marky Mark Mothersbaugh
The Walkmen Without Hats
Richard Beck, "5.4" →
This article has had a lot of attention paid to it recently, and I finally read it today while sitting in the waiting room of a medical clinic in St. Paul. I liked a few things about it, while I found others quite bothersome.
As a sort of cultural history, I think it’s really interesting if for no other reason because it confirms my thesis that Radiohead’s Kid A is the end of the musical twentieth century: the twenty-first begins—simultaneously—with 9/11 and the Strokes’ Is This It?.*
At the same time, though, Beck makes a(n admittedly sincere) rhetorical flaw when he writes:
A pretty good example of this kind of indie rock fan is me. In the two years since I graduated from college, I’ve had a pretty good time being “broke” in New York and drinking “cheap” beer with my friends. But sometimes I remind myself that the beer I’m drinking is not actually cheap, and that furthermore I am not actually broke: if I married someone who made the same salary I make, our household income would be slightly above the national median, which is also true of almost every person I spend my free time with. The truth is that I inherited expensive tastes and moved to an expensive city, and sometimes I get cranky about not being able to buy what I want. But when I don’t feel like reminding myself of these things, I can listen to indie music.
He goes on to take stabs at both Sufjan Stevens and M.I.A. (who both deserve stabs, I acquiesce, and not of the metaphorical variety) which makes me wonder if all of this isn’t just reactionary bullshit, and that Beck isn’t just waxing nostalgic for a culture that he was never a part of: Pitchfork’s “edenic era” (1995-1999), when slackers were still cool, zines still existed, and the Internet hadn’t ruined all of our fun by making everything corporate and cynical.**
Finally, what the fuck does he mean by, “we need new musical forms”? Does he know what he means by that? I don’t believe that he does. I think that there are plenty of musicians—within and without the indie rock milieu—who are currently experimenting with “new musical forms” in significant ways. But I have no idea if what I consider to be a “new musical form” at all resembles that which he demands at the end of the essay, because he doesn’t say another word about it, except to ask for “musicians who know that music can take inspiration not only from other music but from the whole experience of life,” as if he were Walter Fucking Benjamin.
I’m pretty sure, though, that if he were able to somehow articulate what it means to create a “new musical form” in the twenty-first century, and that if some musician or band were able to live up to this criteria in the form (no pun intended) of a record, Pitchfork would give that record a “10.0” review—or at least, somewhere in the nines.
*Chuck Klosterman makes a similar argument in Killing Yourself to Live. In fact, I should probably give him full credit and admit that my “thesis” is only a slight elaboration of his idea. It was in the eighteenth century, André Bazin writes, “when the notion of plagiarism appeared for the first time.”
**This happened long before the Internet.
"I am a living male turtleneck. You are an art teacher in winter. You put your whole head through me." →
“Elle ne savait pas combien elle était vertueuse dans le crime qu’elle se reprochait.”
John Larriva, From Chaos (2011)
The More Oddly Specific Film & Television Categories Suggested To Me By Netflix, Apparently Based On My "Taste Preferences" (Which Amounts To Two Ways Of Saying The Same Thing, Essentially)
- British Detective TV Dramas
- Critically-acclaimed Gritty Independent Movies
- Dramas Featuring a Strong Female Lead
- Mind-bending Foreign Movies
- Witty TV Comedies
- Quirky French-Language Comedies
- Dark Social Issue Dramas about Marriage
- Classic TV Shows from the 1960s
- Violent Crime Movies based on contemporary literature
- Understated Suspenseful Psychological Movies
- Cerebral Movies
- Independent Movies Featuring a Strong Female Lead
A text message I received at 2:59 AM, from a Los Angeles number which I do not recognize.
“Bobby went down in a tub of Dom Pérignon. Bobby Keys, so the story goes, is the only man who knows how many bottles of it it takes to fill a bath, because that’s what he was floating in. This was just before the second-to-last gig on the ‘73 European tour, in Belgium. No sign of Bobby at the band assembly that day, and finally I was asked if I knew where my buddy was—there had been no reply from his hotel room. So I went to his room and said, Bob, we gotta go, we gotta go right now. He’s got a cigar, bathtub full of champagne and this French chick in with him. And he said, fuck off. So be it. Great image and everything like that, but you might regret it, Bob. The accountant informed Bobby afterwards that he had earned no money at all on the tour as a result of that bathtub; in fact he owed.”
Dear Friends,
Please expect some sort of avant-garde response to this video from Aaron Apps and myself in the nearish future.
Best,
Andrew
“The truth is that Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Marx, and Balanchine ballets don’t redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history; it is the white race and it alone—its ideologies and inventions—which eradicates autonomous civilizations wherever it spreads, which has upset the ecological balance of the planet, which now threatens the very existence of life itself.”
FRITES!
A few weeks ago, while drinking in the daytime, I was asked the question “What is poetry to you?” by my friend, Aaron Apps. This, apparently, is what I had to say in response.
"white snow and / a cold freezing / and faces so ugly / that even death will turn away— / wince— / before taking / them."
“dear tom
have i ever told you that i
think your name ought to be
bill. it doesnt really matter
of course, but you know, i like
to be comfortable around people.
how is margy? or martha? or
whatever the hell her name is?
listen: when you arrive & you
hear somebody yelling “willy” it’ll
be me that’s who … so c’mon. there’ll
be a car & a party waiting. it’ll
be very easy to single me out, so
dont say you didnt know i was there
gratefully
truman peyote”