Periodical–Prospect

I recently received an e-mail from a nice person at Prospect (a British magazine).  The email asked if I’d like to review their magazine.  After being completely flattered, I said, “Of course!”  And then I waited nervously hoping that the magazine was good and that I wouldn’t have to say anything mean about it, because [...]

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Periodical: The Week

I’m not sure how I first learned about The Week. I think I received a trial issue in the mail. But after just one or two issues we were hooked.  The Week is a comprehensive newsweekly, although it offers virtually no original reporting.  It collates news stories and offers opinions from a variety of sources: [...]

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Helen Humphries–”On the Plains of Abraham” (The Walrus, September 2009)

SOUNDTRACK: DEATH CAB FOR CUTE: Narrow Stairs EP (2009).
This EP follows the release of Narrow Stairs and is sort of a collection of outtakes from that session.  And the impressive thing is that these are the outtakes. There are four original songs and one demo version of a track from Narrow Stairs.
All of the [...]

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David Foster Wallace–[Week 9.5: J.O.I.'s Filmography] Infinite Jest (1996)

SOUNDTRACK: SONIC YOUTH-SYR 4: Goodbye 20th Century (1999).
This SYR recording consists of Sonic Youth’s interpretations of 20th century composers’ works.  Some of the composers are obscure, but a few are more or less household names: John Cage, Yoko Ono, maybe Steve Reich.  I knew a few of these composers from Kronos Quartet, but for [...]

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Periodical: New Yorker

It took me going to Seattle to learn about The New Yorker magazine.  I was visiting my friend Rob and he was really surprised that I didn’t read the magazine all the time (my reading always seems to surprise people, see The Believer.)
Upon my first read of the magazine, I was surprised to see that [...]

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Clash of the Gods (The History Channel, 2009)

[WATCHED: August-October 2009] Clash of the Gods

[UPDATE: October 26, 2009]
I have now finished the entire series.  I was pleasantly surprised by how much I learned from it.  (Not that I considered myself an expert, but you never know what you’ll get from TV series). The biggest surprise was how much this series filled in the [...]

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Danica Novgorodoff, James Ponsoldt & Benjamin Percy–Refresh Refresh (2009)

SOUNDTRACK: SONIC YOUTH-Sister (1987).

It’s surprising how catchy Sister starts.  “Schizophrenia” is wonderfully sing-songy.  And “Catholic Block,” while noisy, is certainly single-worthy (and would likley be one if it were released today).  Kim has two tracks, “Beauty Lies in the Eye” which is a spoken word piece ala “Shadow of a Doubt.”  While “Pacific Coast Highway” [...]

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Kurt Vonegut–A Man Without a Country (2005)

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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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)

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

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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