Tosh.0 (2009-)

Our friend Paula (no not that Paula, another Paula) told Sarah about this show.  And they were able to watch an episode together at a conference.  When Sarah came home, we TiVo’d a bunch of episode and we have probably not stopped laughing since. The premise of Tosh.0 is very simple: Tosh, the host, shows [...]

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Fredy Perlman–[Week 8] Letters of Insurgents (1976)

SOUNDTRACK: WOODY GUTHRIE-This Land is Your Land: The Asch Recordings Vol 1 (1997). Protesters don’t get more powerful or more emblematic than Woody Guthrie (if nothing else, he should be forever thanked for “This Land is Your Land”).   Some of his other great political songs are “Lindbergh” (“Now Lindy tried to join the army, [...]

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Heidi Julavits–”Multiples of Cohen”(Harper’s, August 2010)

SOUNDTRACK: SERENA-MANEESH-Serena-Maneesh (2005). The thing that surprises me most about this band is that they are Norwegian (although I’m not sure why that surprises me).  They have a convoluted past, and I’m still not sure what the name means, but I really like the CD. So, as I was led to believe, this debut album [...]

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Stephen Burn–David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest: A Reader’s Guide (2003)

SOUNDTRACK: SERENA MANEESH-”Sapphire Eyes” (2005). I used to keep a list of songs and albums that I would try to find.  On this list was a single or a B-Side by Serena Maneesh.  I’ve lost the list, but someone just donated their debut album to our library.  So I’m excited to check it out.  In [...]

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90,000

On July 25, I reached 90,000 hits. It took me seven months to get from 60,000 (Dec 25, 2009) to 90,000. It took me nine months to get my first 30,000 hits. There are some obvious contributing factors to this improvement (not the least of which is links from referrers that make absolutely no sense [...]

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James Joyce–[Week 3] Ulysses (1922) [Aeolus, Lestrygonians, Scylla and Charybdis]

SOUNDTRACK: DING DONG DENNY O’REILLY & THE HAIRY BOWSIES-publocked (1996). My friend Lar introduced me to this ol’fella (he may have even sent me this CD, as I can’t imagine where I’d have found it on my own). Ding Dong Denny is the alter ego of Paul Woodfull (who created the Joshua Trio a U2 [...]

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Periodical: Smithsonian

Our family visited Washington DC and went to a few museums.  We talked about subscribing to Smithsonian magazine (and getting a membership to the museums), but we put it off.  Then I received an offer in the mail to subscribe to the magazine and get a membership all for $12.  So we did.  And I’m [...]

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Porter Fox–”The Last Stand of Free Town” (The Believer, June 2010)

SOUNDTRACK: AVI BUFFALO-”What’s In It For” (2010). I received an email from Amazon telling me that their top 50 CDs of the year (so far) were online.  The second disc was by Avi Buffalo.  I’d never heard of Avi Buffalo, but they were on Sub Pop, so that’s a good sign. I was going to [...]

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Fredy Perlman–[Week 7] Letters of Insurgents (1976)

SOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-”Horses” (1991). I have mentioned the Rheostatics a lot.  I’ve even talked about this song in Melville.  And yet it works so well as a companion to this book. It starts slowly enough, a simple acoustic guitar with the lyrics: Word came down and it crashed through my door From the twenty-first floor I [...]

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Tom Bissell–”Cinema Crudité: The mysterious appeal of the post-camp cult film” (Harper’s, August 2010)

SOUNDTRACK: SAFURA-”Drip Drop” (2010) Azerbaijan came in 5th in this year’s Eurovision contest.  And they did it with this monstrosity of a song by Safura.  She sounds like so many pop chanteuses, pulling out all the stops on high notes, vibrato and even a fascinatingly accented English. But just as I’m about to dismiss this [...]

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