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Archive for July, 2009

David Foster Wallace–[Week 6] Infinite Jest (1996)

Posted in Andrew Womack, Big Books, Boredom, Boston, MA, Canadian Content, Consumerism, Corporate skewering, David Foster Wallace, Death, Demons, Digression, Dreams, Drinking, Drugs, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Holidays, Humiliation, Infinite Summer, Meta, Neurotics, Postmoderism, Set at School, Smarty Pants, Suicide, Technology, Tennis, The Future, TiVo, Violence, Yuck! on July 29, 2009 | 5 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: The Best Albums of the Year
Andrew Womack, fellow Infinite Summer player and founder of The Morning News has begun retroactively listing The Best Albums of the Year for each year since 1978.  This is a project that I have often thought about doing myself, yet never had the time to sift through all the [...]

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David Foster Wallace–This is Water [2005 commencement speech from Kenyan College] (2009)

Posted in David Foster Wallace, Demons, Essays, Infinite Summer, Morality, NPR/PRI/PBS, Set at School, Smarty Pants, Sonic Youth, Suicide, Universities on July 29, 2009 | 3 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: SONIC YOUTH in concert from NPR (July 7, 2009 at Washington DC’s 9:30 Club).
I’m not sure how I learned that this show was online.  But I was pretty delighted to see NPR hosting a live Sonic Youth show (this is actually the 2nd Sonic Youth show they’ve hosted and the older one is still [...]

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Lauren Child–Clarice Bean, Don’t Look Now (2006)

Posted in Adventure, Boredom, Children's Books, Decemberists, Lauren Child, Marriage Trouble, Mystery, Ralph's World, Set at School, They Might Be Giants, Threats on July 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: RALPH’S WORLD-Peggy’s Pie Parlor (2003).
When my son Clark was born, Sarah and I made a conscious effort to find music for him (really for us) that wasn’t, well, Raffi.  Not that there’s anything wrong with Raffi per se, but well, he’s kind of annoying.
In the 4 years since he was born, there’s been an [...]

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Kurt Vonegut–A Man Without a Country (2005)

Posted in Books about writers, Corporate skewering, Death, Essays, Free Speech, Funny (ha ha), In These Times, Kurt Vonnegut, Old Age, Poetry, Political Humor, Prison, Religion, Short Books, Smarty Pants, Sonic Youth, Technology, The Future, Threats, War on July 27, 2009 | 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: SONIC YOUTH-EVOL (1986).
Ah, EVOL.  Here’s where Sonic Youth became Sonic Youth.  Who knows how much Steve Shelley had to do with it, but he shows up and the band becomes amazing.  The cover art is pretty darn scary and yet the music inside is amazingly beautiful.  While by no means a commercial album, the [...]

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Periodical: Wired

Posted in Consumerism, Danger Mouse, Dark Night of the Soul, David Lynch, Esquire, Funky Web Sites, Guillermo del Toro, Hive, Oddities, Outer Space, Sci-fi, Slaughterhouse Five, Sparklehorse, Stephen Colbert, Technology, The Future, The Hobbit, Tiny Masters of Today, Video Games, Weird Al Yankovic, Wired on July 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

Many many years ago (1995), while I was in Boston, I bought my first copy of Wired magazine (how could I forget the absurd cover to the right (yes, there IS a picture there) [And I'm very impressed that you can easily link to all of their back issues, just as I did with the [...]

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David Foster Wallace–[Week 5] Infinite Jest (1996)

Posted in Big Books, Canadian Content, Canadian Music, Consumerism, Corner Gas, Corporate skewering, David Foster Wallace, Death, Digression, Dreams, Drinking, Drugs, End of the World, Eschaton, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Infinite Summer, Kids in the Hall, Neurotics, Postmoderism, Rick Mercer, Set at School, Smarty Pants, Suicide, Technology, Tennis, The Future, The Walrus, Toilets, Tragically Hip, Violence, Work, Yuck! on July 24, 2009 | 6 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: THE TRAGICALLY HIP-We Are the Same (2009).
I first heard of The Hip when I saw their video for “Nautical Disaster.” This is back in the day when I first got Canada’s MuchMusic on my Brighton, MA cable system, and when I actually watched Music channels. Anyhow, the song was intense and very cool and [...]

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William H. Gass–”Kinds of Killing: The Flourishing Evil of the Third Reich” [a review of The Third Reich at War] (Harper’s, August 2009)

Posted in Death, Essays, Harper's, History, Military, Nazis, Racism, Religion, Suicide, Threats, Violence, War, William H. Gass on July 24, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: Songs That Got Us Through WW2 (1993).

My dad was in World War II. He was a Navy man, and he worked on airplanes.  He was stationed in the South Pacific.  When I was growing up, he listened to a lot of big band music (while most of my friends’ parents were listening to folk [...]

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The McSweeney’s Joke Book of Book Jokes (2008)

Posted in Belle and Sebastian, Ben Greenman, Books about writers, Christopher Monks, Colin McEnroe, Craig Berman, Dave Johnston, Ellie Kemper, Franz Kafka, Frightened Rabbit, Funky Web Sites, Funny (ha ha), Harper Lee, Harry Potter, Homer, Irish Writer, James Joyce, Jane Austen, John Hodgman, Magic, Matthew Kennedy, McSweeney's, Meta, Postmoderism, Set at School, Short Story, Smarty Pants, Supernatural, Teddy Wayne, Tim Carvell, Time Travel, Uncategorized on July 23, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: FRIGHTENED RABBIT-Midnight Organ Fight (2008).
My friend Jarrett introduced me to this band.  He rather casually called it his favorite album of the year, so I figured it was worth checking out.
Frightened Rabbit are a group from Scotland, and they play a sort of disaffected folk.  Although that’s not a wholly accurate description because they [...]

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Kurt Vonnegut–Slaughterhouse Five or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty Dance with Death (1969)

Posted in Death, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), History, Kurt Vonnegut, Marriage (Happy), Military, Nazis, Prison, Sex, Slaughterhouse Five, Smarty Pants, Sonic Youth, War on July 23, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: SONIC YOUTH-Bad Moon Rising (1985).
Another Sonic Youth record, another record label.  Bad Moon Rising is a pretty big leap from Confusion is Sex, in that there are actual songs.  Well, that’s not fair, what I mean is that the songs have structure like proper songs do. In fact, “Death Valley ‘69″ (with vocals by [...]

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Jean-Paul Sartre–”A Fine Display of Capuchins” (Harper’s, August 2009)

Posted in Death, Essays, Harper's, Jean-Paul Sartre, Morality, Religion, Smarty Pants, Sonic Youth, Swans, Wikipedia on July 22, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: SONIC YOUTH-Sonic Death: Early Sonic 1981-1983 (1984).
This document shows just how scary a Sonic Youth show could have been back in their early days.  Well, not scary so much as noisy!   They mention that they’ve been touring with the Swans, so you can imagine how intense these shows must have been.
This record is kind [...]

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