Mike Doughty can be corny at times, and he shifts from serious lyrics to goofy crap at the drop of a dime, but he catches those melodies and rhythms that please the human ear.

This documentary about indie rock posters and the art behind them looks interesting.

After playing the Indiana Jones Legos game on the Wii and seeing the triology box set of the movies, my eldest son has become interested in WWII and the Nazis as bad guys.  That reminded me of the seminal graphic novel Maus by Art Spiegelman.  Since the Nazis portrayed the Jews as vermin to be exterminated, Spiegelman draws the Jews as mice and Nazis as cats.  This cat and mouse metaphor makes the reader comfortable with the very serious material using seemingly harmless animal comic characters, but it also creates many levels of meaning dealing with racial stereotypes, nationalistic identities, and the commonality of humanity.

Art Spiegelman

Art Spiegelman Titles

An interesting post about Russian writer and philosopher Alexander Solzhenitsyn.  I’m also copying and pasting a comment I thought was poignant.

http://www.litkicks.com/AlexanderSolzhenitsyn/

Comment by Shannon — August 6th, 2008 10:03 pm

I received The Foreigner: A Novel by Francie Lin from Librarything.com’s early reviewer program.

Just in time for China’s Olympic glory, this crime noir takes the reader to Taiwan. Lin does a great job of guiding the reader through the streets of Taipei and showing us the underbelly that most tourists will never see. This is her debut novel, and she often switches between the hardboiled-crime prose one would expect in a thriller when she handles plot and dialogue, and a more poetic literary style when writing about setting and the inner thoughts of Emerson, the protagonist.

The plot focuses on Emerson’s return to Taipei from the US after his mother dies. He must find his estranged brother, Little P, and settle his mother’s will and last wishes. It is evident very early in the novel that Little P is involved in some shady business with some unsavory characters. The plot is fast-paced and keeps the reader turning the pages. Emerson, who is overly naive and idealistic, is suffering an existential identity crisis. He dos not speak Chinese fluently, and without his mother and his childhood home (the family hotel), Emerson is lost in the world. He struggles to find some connection with his brother, the only person left in the world who shares some memories of Emerson’s past. Little P is elusive and dubious, and Emerson makes critical mistakes dealing with his cousins, Little P’s business partners. Lin throws in commentary on western tourists and the politics of Taiwan.

The novel is good as crime fiction and the fact that it is set in the Asian crime world makes it somewhat unique. However, it has a few flaws. Most readers will figure out what is going on long before naive Emerson gets it, which makes Emerson’s bumbling towards the end a little annoying. He simply fails to ask himself some pretty basic questions about situations and the actions of other characters, which makes the reader ask “Why doesn’t he just…?” too many times. This makes his final transformation and realization a little to sudden and unrealistic.

As I mentioned, Lin switches between two writing styles: crime and literary. I got the impression that she has literary ambitions (identity dilemma, Cain and Abel allusion, poetic prose), but also wants to sell copies, hence the mystery-crime plot. I imagine that loyal readers of crime novels will find the literary style overwritten, and literature readers, like myself, will find the characters underdeveloped and the plot pulpy.

It was an enjoyable read, but not mind blowing. I can see a film noir version. Personally, I’d like to see Lin develop her literary ambitions and give us another Taipei novel focusing on character in that beautiful prose of hers.

Adobe Reader required

Blessed are the Lonely copyright 2008

Stupid cell phones and wifi- all because you can’t wait to get home to call someone on a phone with a cord (You know,  the way people did it for 70 years without complaint?)  What’s really ironic is that now we have scifi communication abilities, but nothing important to say.  Beam me up, Scotty.

http://jeb.biologists.org/cgi/reprint/200/9/1363

http://www.bienenarchiv.de/forschung/2004_lernprozesse/Electromagnetic%20Exposure_Learning%20Processes.doc.pdf

In short, the electromagnetic waves from the stupendous increase in cell phones, cell phone towers, wifi, and military communication towers (which is another scary situation) are not only screwing with our minds, they’re screwing with the birds’ and the bees’ ability to navigate.  They get lost and die instead of pollinating everything we need to survive.  Will the media carry this story?  Well, the eighteen advertisements for family cell phone plans pay the bills.  Money makes the world go round.

Seriously, was life really that difficult in, say, 1950 that we need all this crap to survive and be happy?   Didn’t people entertain themselves?  They didn’t go insane with boredom, did they?

I saw M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening the other day. I’m not going to give away any spoilers; but when Mark Walberg is teaching his science class about the disappearing bees, I thought “Man, this is going to be a good scary movie.” Because the bees really are disappearing and that’s some really scary shite. Without bees to pollinate our and other mammals’ food sources, we will not last long. Here’s an article from The New Yorker about it.

The movie wasn’t about the disappearing bees, and I imagine it would have been a much better movie if it had been. Much has been made about it being his first R-rated movie. Several violent and gory scenes earned the move its rating, but what’s painful is the fact that these scenes are totally unnecessary to the film. They exist solely for the rating and to make teenagers say, “Cool!” I thought the premise for the movie was good. It just wasn’t executed very well. The viewer always has to suspend disbelief and logic when watching a thriller/horror movie. This movie crossed that fine line into the this-just-doesn’t-make-any-sense category. I’m nit picking about details, and I can’t say anymore without giving the mystery away. It wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t anywhere near his best. I rank it just above Lady in the Water.

The trailer makes it look intriguing though.

A friend and I made the trip to the Charlottesville Pavilion last night to see Modest Mouse. It was my first time at the Pavilion, and I was impressed. It is a open air amphitheater, but the vast majority of seating is covered by a raised canopy. All seats were general admission, except a slender row of “box seats” in the middle, which consisted of tables with four chairs. Most of the box seats were empty, which was a waste. We were directly behind the box seats. It was a great night for a show; a cool breeze playing games with the smoke from the back of the stage and the lights was blowing left to right through the theater .

The Dirty Dozen Brass Band from New Orleans opened the show with a mix of funky New Orleans style jazz. They put on an energetic show and were great musicians, but I couldn’t help think how much better it would be to see them in a club pack full of inebriated people full of love and a desire to dance. They even played a funky version of “When the Saints go Marching in,” which should have invoked a mass Sunday sing along, but didn’t. I’m not familiar with their music, but the highlight for me was a funky blues number during which the trombone player sang about having a fat woman who loved him all night long. Her hips were “deep and wide” like the river, and he had to swim across to get to the other side. All the while the rest of the band is chanting, “Don’t tell nobody.” I’ve read that the band recorded a rendition of Marvin Gaye’s entire What’s Going On album in response to Hurricane Katrina. They played a body moving version of the title track.

In between bands, I made a trip to the bathroom to get rid of the one beer I drank. I have to say it was the nicest bathroom I’ve been to at an amphitheater. The line moved very fast. I’ve always had a fear of urinals. We won’t go into the Freudian meanings in that, but I had to go so bad I didn’t care that there was an extremely tall guy next to me, and the dividing wall meant nothing to him.

I got back to my seat in time to see the arrival of a mid-forties woman with a much younger man in the box directly in front of my friend. She was wearing a thin white sun skirt (my knowledge of fashion vocabulary is limited). I’m not sure if she didn’t check it before she left the house or if she intended it, but her thong was a much whiter, brighter, and visible shade than her skirt. At the end of the show, my friend said he felt like he owed her some money.

About the time my friend audibly and cheerfully pondered whether women wear bras in Charlottesville, a young lady in her late teens or early twenties passed on her way to the pit. She wore a extremely thin open-backed shirt, and it was very obvious she wasn’t wearing a bra because the headlights were on high beam. She was also wearing an equally thin sun skirt, and it was equally obvious that she was wearing no “dra’rs,” as we like to say in the country. She appeared to be on something- ecstasy perhaps? As she passed the old man who was walking the aisles selling bottled water, he rubbernecked to get a second glance, raised his eyebrows, and shook his head. I’m sure she made some young men in the pit very happy last night. Ahh, to be young.

A long siren signaled that Modest Mouse was making their way to the stage. They exploded into “Dance Hall,” which sent violent undulations through the crowd. The band blasted from song to song with no banter. At one point Johnny Marr, former guitar player for the Smiths who joined MM in 2006, introduced the band and the return of The Dirty Dozen Brass Band for “The Good Times are Killing Me,” the horn intro from Good News…, and “This Devil’s Workday.”

The set list included a mix of songs from early to newer albums. I was happy to hear songs from my favorite album, The Moon and Antarctica. A couple surprises were “Wild Pack of Family Dogs” and “Paper Thin Walls.” Lead singer Isaac Brock donned his electric banjo for several songs, including the aforementioned “This Devil’s Workday,” which was a treat. They rocked several songs from the more polished new album- “Invisible,” “Education,” “Missed the Boat,” “Fire it Up,” and the popular “Dashboard.” Even though the album is heavily produced, the band’s live sound is closer to it’s loud and chaotic independent roots. One of the highlights from the Good News… album was “Satin in a Coffin,” which Brock sang/barked with conviction.

Sadly, in the age of Mp3s I don’t know the names of all the songs, in particular the faster, older songs. After the break the band came back for an encore and treated the crowd to the hit “Float On,” which prompted the typical stadium rock sing-a-long. It was nice. It was a nice night. I would have liked to to have heard “Tiny Cities Made of Ashes,” “Little Motel,” or “Parting of the Sensory,” but I can’t complain with the show they gave us. The band played hard, and they were sincere with their thanks at the end of the night.

The school library went through the stacks and decided to throw away what is considered great books by universal artistic standards to make way for more of what is considered good books by American consumerism standards. I’m not complaining because I get a lot of free books.

One I picked up is Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s A Coney Island of the Mind. For laymen, Ferlinghetti, along with Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, is one of the quintessential Beat generation poets. Although I read a lot of Kerouac in my late teens and loved it, I never got around to Ferlinghetti. It is a thin volume, and the first section is the title’s namesake. He explains that these poems represent “…a kind of circus of the soul.” It is surreal with images of nature, city, absurdity, sex, drunkenness, and beauty with which he questions existence and the poet’s role.

The second section is a collection of poems he improvised for experimental jazz accompaniment. The third section is a collection of poems from his first book, which he decided to reprint in his second book. Why? I’m not sure.

Overall, it’s a good find with several memorable poems and images.

Here’s one that is often anthologized:

Constantly risking absurdity

and death

whenever he performs

above the heads

of his audience

the poet like an acrobat

climbs on rime

to a high wire of his own making

and balancing on eyebeams

above a sea of faces

paces his way

to the other side of the day

performing entrechats

and sleight-of-foot tricks

and other high theatrics

and all without mistaking

any thing

for what it may not be

For he’s the super realist

who must perforce perceive

taut truth

before the taking of each stance or step

in his supposed advance

toward that still higher perch

where Beauty stands and waits

with gravity

to start her death-defying leap

And he

a little charleychaplin man

who may or may not catch

her fair eternal form

spreadeagled in the empty air

of existence

Here’s another that is not often anthologized:

See

it was like this when

we waltz into this place

a couple of Papish cats

is doing an Aztec two-step

And I says

Dad let’s cut

but then this dame

comes up behind me see

and says

You and me could really exist

Wow I says

Only the next day

she has bad teeth

and really hates

poetry