Thursday, March 27, 2008

GREAT!

Youtube Greatness.

see Twin Peaks & Cookie Monster

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Apology/Warning:TYPICAL BLOGGER FARE

WTF?

= ???

from the upcoming G. I. JOE Movie

I can handle Sienna Miller=Baroness (though it's not perfect), I can handle Ray Park=Snake Eyes, but Joseph Gordon Levitt as Cobra Commander? That doesn't work at all.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

on a Lazy Thursday...

Seemingly random musings on a slow work day...

1) Sonic Youth sucks. Last night I was listening to a tape of a Space Monkey Rock show from my senior year. At one point I played a set going Knoxville Girls -> Honeymoon Killers -> Sonic Youth (death valley '69) -> Blonde Redhead. Which is fine, but is revealing of the wonky-side of my then approach to planning out my radio sets. (ie Bob Bert played drums on both K-Girls and that SY song, the lead singer/guitarist is shared between K-Girls & the H-Killers, SY and BR are forever linked.) Hearing death valley '69 is always a binary experience for me. Either I think it's the fucking rockingest song ever or (more typically) I found it extremely boring and kind-of an overwrought bullshit navel-gazing, trend-spotting, shallow song about Manson & the end of the California Love generation. And that really is my winnowed-down critique of SY; how blatant and icky is their trend-spotting, sign-waving nature. Do they have value outside of that? Do they have commitment to their thing other than keeping their place as cool-kid insider king-makers?

2) THIS reflects poorly on this band. Can you imagine a more boring hipster bands responses to these questions? Oh, yr in a hipster electronics/noise (but not really that noisy) duo who like Animal Collective and Black Dice? Oh, you like punk and to you that means Black Flag & the Stooges? Oh, you think Rough Trade is the best record stores in the UK? You called your band WHAT? And what about these make you interesting AT ALL?

Begging the question, how often do bands shoot themselves in the foot w/ these sort of things. I was somewhat interested in hearing what Fuck Buttons sounded like before reading their 'guest list', now not-so-much. To see an even worse example: VW's Rostam's Guest List (and yes, I still read pitchfork regularly.)

3) from the Other Music description of the Crystal Stilts
"... With primitive girl group stand-up drums and reverb-heavy and melodic surf/rockabilly-soaked guitar lines, the four songs on the EP are the perfect amalgam of the pop immediacy of C86/Flying Nun and a DIY take on the spacious '60s sounds of Spector and Nitzsche."

I like this band but um... wouldn't the one phrase encapsulation = They sound like early Jesus and Mary Chain.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Why moving to Pittsburgh won't be that bad.

ANTHROCON! ANTHROCON!

which is not about this.




















but this.

Monday, March 17, 2008

random Elect

The last two times I have seen my brother, to whom I almost exclusively owe the direction of my worldview/taste compass, he has mentioned the American author Richard Yates. During his lifetime he had moderate success and acclaim (mostly among fellow authors), reaching an early peak with his debut novel Revolutionary Road. Interest in Yates has recently(-ish) been revived and lots of his books and a collection of stories are now in print. A revival causing and/or caused by a Leonardo Dicaprio & Kate Winslet film of RR. (interesting aside/biographical note: for a period of time my brother almost exclusively recommended novels that were being made into movies Fight Club, The Beach, The Talented Mr. Ripley, which I thought at the time was both cool and appropriate - and moderately led to my own interests in genre fiction.) Where and how my brother got into Yates or how interest in Yates became revived is unknown to me, but more importantly it led me to borrow and read RR from my brother a week ago.

While most synopses of RR say it's a book about an idealistic couple being consumed & destroyed by the suburban conformity & dreariness (a reading even Yates approves - though he focuses on only one half of the couple), I read less an indictment of suburbia than an indictment of those who presume to be excepted from the undertow of conformity, taking a critical but uncommitted viewpoints of the drones and squares around them. An indictment of a strain of American intellectualism & liberalism & cosmopolitan exceptionalsim that is all smoke and little fire. A deep sense of exceptionalism that is as or more deluded than the content republican-voting anti-intellectual reactionary suburban "conformity." Though part of the problem with talking about this book is the still ever present squares v. non-squares sort of dialogue in the American culture realm. What would it mean if squares, you know, don't actually exist?

Other quick follow-ups:

I've continued to think about comic book continuity and still marvel at the fact that it's foregrounded so much in discussions about comics and yet has very little to do with why individual comics are successful. Well, that is, I'd hope that the writing and the art have more to do with a comic's success than it's place in the canon or the multiverse. And to undercut that again, some of the best mainstream comics are ones that are all too aware of the role in the multiverse and are able to do interesting things with it. Though arguably the enjoyment of the original Secret Wars is a different thing than that of the Watchmen or Swamp Thing or Y:the Last Man (though all of those rely on connections and deviations from the history of SuperHero comics for their critical power) and it'd be interesting to parse that out. ANYWAY - what I wanted to draw a comparison to was the way continuity works in other genres, namely science writing. Where in comic books continuity is sometimes foregrounded in lieu of content, in science writing content is foregrounded before continuity (and the power of each genre is derived (maybe?) more from what is hidden than what is shown). The genre limitations of both work to misdirect the way they are talked about and how they pack their truth/power content. and again that's qualified w/ a big ol' maybe? or at least it's something to think about it.

TWO: another champion of insider/outsider re: techniques for the reproduction of art and a revived interest in painting that YOU can do, John Kilduff. How much do I love Let's Paint, Mix Drinks, & Excercise? A LOT.

Side note thanks to wikipedia: Larry David once dated Richard Yates daughter. Wierd.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Art: For the PEOPLE

now crowned as another champion among all, Steve Keene.

Over the weekend I picked up some more SK paintings from his studio (it's open for selling paintings every Sunday in Brooklyn, most paintings are $2). Two as gifts (a version of the Bowie's Heros and a cutout Banana) and one for myself (my civil war). I also have a couple other's buried in my brother's house and one other (my first) that my brother gave to me when I was in high school. This is not to say 'look at me', but well, as SK sez for himself:

“I want buying my paintings to be like buying a CD: it’s art, it’s cheap and it changes your life, but the object has no status. Musicians create something for the moment, something with no boundaries and that kind of expansiveness is what I want to come across in my work.”

Word. The dude could write a manifesto about the role of Art in life, but instead, or mostly, he just paints and sells paintings (cheap). In fact, at $2-10 his paintings are decidedly cheaper than any CD or record (although maybe not vs used tapes or thrift store vinyl), you could possibly find. SK is theory in practice. (about art production, the art market, ideas about fine art) SK is ethics in practice. (about access, how to live one's life in relationship to your work and your product, about doing) SK is good art. (versions of album covers, art history greatest hits, landmarks, historical figures, in copious copies & translations - moving something from one point to another which shows it in a different way) This is Showing, not Telling. This is not aloof exceptionalism or intellectualism or wonkiness or post-whatever play of signs/symbols/theories/revolution, this understanding (or at least actively trying/acting on) what folks like W.Benjamin would say about art & mechanical reproduction, and bringing it to the world. Sure it's still exclusive and bourgeoisie in it's audience (as in this is still the ART WORLD - not sidewalk art) but it is pushing the borders.

Also I don't think his art is about His method, that is in the way that most contemporary art does not allow for reusing approaches & techniques. I think it's completely valid and appropriate to buy your own plywood, paint & make your own paintings. Hang'em on yr wall, sell'em, make ART practice and seeing part of everyday LIFE. (see the same re: computers & music making & folk art/music etc. etc. etc.)

"No one was really into the paintings, but I was really into painting them, so if no gallery was going to show my art, then screw 'em, I'm going make people see it, just by painting so many, and making them so cheap that people have to buy it."

and a cool little video about SK