January 2012
34 posts
“A similar sort of effect can be seen in the work of Wallace’s great idol, Don...”
– Scott Espositio
“Had anyone chosen to ponder further, he or she might have wondered at the...”
– Simon Winchester, The Professor and the Madman
Refrigerator - “The Worthless...
2 tags
“Basement Song”
Peter Gizzi
Out of the deep I dreamt the mother.
How deep the mother deep the basement
the body, odor of laundry the soul of a bug.
The grass inside the song stains me.
The mother stains me. That was the year
they cut my throat and toads bloomed
on my voice box. I have kept my head up.
Have kept myself out of trouble
but deep is trouble deep is mother.
Deep...
“I think the beautiful life is a lie.”
– Ange Mlinko
List of Anticipated Records of 2012
Craig Finn - Clear Heart Full Eyes (01/24)
John K. Samson - Provincial (01/24)
Leonard Cohen - Old Ideas (01/31)
Fucked Up - Year of the Tiger (02/07)
Sharon Van Etten - Tramp (02/07)
Shearwater - Animal Joy (02/14)
Trust - TRST (02/28)
The Wrens - ?? (??) [I really do think it will happen this year, though I also said this last year…]
The...
2 tags
The Bicameral Eyeball
John Ashbery
No one noticed that it was midnight out. The tools to make the tools were forthcoming. It wasn’t so much that we were afraid of farting as that other thieves had gotten wind of his maladdress. She was startling in her new headdress. Oodles of trolls performed the funeral litany— hey, it wasn’t their turn at the foc’sle, so why be perturbed ahead of time, and...
Chris T.’s 2011 Top 10 Top 10: 10. 4 9. 5 8. 2 7. 6 6. 9 5. 10 4. 8 3. 1 2. 7 1. 3
(via WFMU’s Beware of the Blog)
“Recurring Awakening”
Franz Wright
I stop a tall girl all in blue on the hall and receive first a harried and desultory apology then, point blank, news that you passed late last night. You passed at three-thirty in the morning. What is it, some sort of exam? She smiles at herself, epicenter of this revelation, I find myself walking along a high ridge in the wake of an ice...
WatchGarry Marshall made a movie, and it’s called New Year’s Eve. Perhaps you’ve seen it—though it’s more likely you’ve seen the posters for it. Everybody who ever sneezed at famous is in this movie. And it may surprise you to learn that this is not a very good movie. That’s a real shame because a concept so timeless as New Year’s Eve should not be ruined...
“It is not known what exactly Obama did on Mars. (Socializing Martian health...”
– Wired article about everyone’s new favorite conspiracy theory
Anonymous asked: What would happen if you made a mix out of your top 10 albums and posted it here? I'll tell you what would happen: I would download it. And listen to it. And play it on the radio.
December 2011
62 posts
“The charge of obscurity has been raised at regular or irregular intervals since...”
– Ezra Pound, in the Preface to George Oppen’s “Discrete Series.”
2 tags
“He comes around the side of the bounced ball’s second ascent the way you...”
– David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
Subjectivism Ho!: A Top Ten Records of 2011 List...
This is, of course, all my personal opinion. But in that opinion, these are definitely the best records of the year.
———
Destroyer - Kaputt
This should come as no surprise to most people who are reading this, as I’ve been discussing it at length and with great fervor all year. I honestly believe that Dan Bejar is one of the greatest lyricists working today; as Carl...
Subjectivism Ho!: A Top Ten Records of 2011 List...
This is, of course, all my personal opinion. But in that opinion, these are definitely the best records of the year.
———
tUnE-yArDs - w h o k i l l
Merrill Garbus’ old slice-and-dice approach is all over w h o k i l l and it could not be more appropriately applied. That approach to songwriting, though less pronounced than on tUnE-yArDs’ first album, engenders a...
With Apologies
Daily Doodles are on hiatus until I get back to New York because I cannot seem to coordinate a working scanner. (I will also cop to welcoming a bit of a break.) Also, I’ve come down with the flu and don’t particularly feel like drawing. Pick the excuse that seems most valid to you.
1 tag
Letters to Michael
Dear Michael (11)
Mark McMorris, from Entrepôt
Exegi monumentum aere perennius —Horace
Say then that the girl and I are in love how to make a poem, you will ask, equal to foolscap clouds laid upon her knees the morning oaks and sunlight pitching over her pages on the bolster and in the coal-stove burning flags of defeat to keep a girl warm no spring comes into...
Where We Stand
or, as the case may be, sit, to which the answer is: the food court in terminal seven at JFK. It’s six am, which feels perhaps more than it should like a personal victory. I don’t like flying, and sitting in an airport for hours forced to listen to Christmas muzak is insult to etc.
Let’s work backwards until we’re having fun—I arrived at JFK shortly before three am...
