The Decemberists - Picaresque.

I don't care what anyone says. This album is a classic. Dust it off; give it a spin some time.

Love

Lu

Jonah Goldberg: real solutions for a broken America.

In this era of obscurantism from the right and waffling from the left, it's always fun to see the "true" conservatives make up some things that actually go against the fundamental wingnut principle: "Government is too big! Obama's making it bigger! Unaccountability! Bootstraps!"

Interesting, then, that Jonah Goldberg's solution to this problem is...more government! Goldberg basically states that the 435 members of the House are not enough to represent the American population. Fine. Honestly, I agree with him--his idea to expand the House, however, seems oddly 'progressive'

A Congress of, say, 5,000 citizen-legislators would change [the intransigency of congress and special interest groups' grip on congress] overnight. Would it cost more money? Yes. But today’s huge staffs could be cut, and perks and pork might even be curtailed by using the old chewing gum rule: If there’s not enough for everyone, nobody can have any.

How would the staffs be reduced? I can reasonably agree that Congressperson X would need a smaller staff since she is representing fewer people, but would that actually work? Since when has any Congressperson agreed to reduce what they have (or could be having)? Not only that, but why in the sweet lord's name would pork spending be reduced? It seems to me that the more people that are in Congress, the more ideas and pet projects are going to be brought to the table. Sure, as it is now, pet projects are often given to those with the most influence, but why could we reasonably assume that simply having more people would cause each individual person to want less? Since when has not having "enough for everyone" been a limit to government spending? Look at our deficit.

The next issue that tickled me was Goldberg's insistency that if there are more people running for office, that a more diverse spread of the population is going to be a Congressperson:

Want more minorities in Congress? Done. Want more libertarians? More socialists? More blue-collar workers? Done, done, done.

Why on earth is it rational to assume that if more positions open up, a different type of person is going to run for congress?

He closes with positing the idea that with more people in congress, more political parties will emerge, providing a "smaller political market" where politicians can be tested before running for presidency. I think I agree with Goldberg here, but I'm not sure it's a better situation politically. I do think the two-party system is bankrupt. I think most people in this country are slightly right of center (including my best "liberal" friends), but the presentation of an insane group of blithering white men screaming about personal accountability and then being found in a bathroom stall with a 14-year old boy who just thought he was going to get a lollipop drives them away from labeling themselves as conservative. I think congress could do with a shake-up, but I don't think that it's going to make government any less corrupt or morally defunct. I think good people aren't going to run for public service positions any more then than they do now.

The best.

And always 99 cents.

Volcano Choir - Unmap

Right now it's rainy in New Haven. (Surprise, surprise). Plato's dissection of Euthyphro can be put aside for the time being, since Justin Vernon's newest album, a collaboration with the instrumental band Collections of Colonies of Bees, is gracing my stereo. And it is bliss. Collections' minimalist multilayered ambience provides a really great backdrop for Vernon's now-ubiquitous voice. It makes for a really great collaboration, and an excellent soundtrack for a rainy day.

Check it here: [NPR's Exclusive First Listen]

Healthcare...finally?

Max Baucus' healthcare plan is finally on the table. There's no gov't run option. This is the worst good-bad thing ever. I wish there were a middle ground on this. I wish the republicans weren't imbued and controlled by wingnuts. I wish congress would think with their brains and not with their approval ratings.

PS-Joe Wilson is an idiot, not a racist. WTF belanie!?

Pericles, to Obama

"All who have taken it upon themselves to rule over others have incurred hatred and unpopularity for a time; but if one has a great aim to pursue, this burden of envy must be accepted, and it is wise to accept it. Hatred does not last for long; but the brilliance of the present is the glory of the future stored up for ever in the memory of man."

College, lovely college

Hello all. Haven't updated in a while--I apologize.

Just a couple of recommendations:

Movies--three things that you need to see. First is Ponyo. Shit is amazing...saw it with the brother on a bro date, and loved every minute of it. The animation is simply stunning. The general plot line works well, but there are a couple of random ramblings and tangents that simply never get resolved. But oh well! It's so pretty and cute and hilarious. Check it out.

Second is The Hurt Locker. It's an incredibly powerful film about a team in Iraq that is responsible for disarming IEDs. The cinematography is often done from the perspectives of the Iraqis, which heightens the tension and unknowningness of the Americans while allowing the viewer to empathize with the invaded and oppressed Iraqis. I can honestly say that a film has never impacted me as deeply as this one. It's a must see.

Third film is a documentary, Food Inc. It's a fascinating expose of today's food industry. It will blow your mind, guaranteed.

Next recommendation--GO TO COLLEGE! IT'S BRILLIANT.

Lu

Girl With Curious Hair - David Foster Wallace

I ordered David Foster Wallace's oeuvre as a graduation gift to myself. I'd read Infinite Jest (1996), Consider The Lobster (2005) and his commencement speech at Kenyon already. With those mere 1447 pages under my belt, I was firmly and deeply committed as a passionate acolyte. Sounds silly, but IJ has really shaped my outlook on life. 

No matter your interpretation, DFW is really fucking hard to read. He is brilliant, hilarious, and extremely thorough. He manages to pick exactly the right word for the situation (I'm sure there's a word for that). His constant self-awareness and unceasing criticism of the post-modernist school that has dominated literature for the past few decades (while being self-aware of his own allegiance and gratitude to said school) is a weirdly satisfying meta-metafictional experience. (Or non-, as the case may be.) 

Anyway, GWCH is a pretty interesting read. It's a collection of short stories (I'd call the last one a novella). You can see the author of Infinite Jest struggling to define his style (and succeeding, I'd say). His criticism of modern-day America is pretty fascinating. Some of the characters involved in GWCH include: Alex Trebek, David Letterman, a barely-concealed John Barthes, and both Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson. As only he could say:

"These stories are 100 percent fiction. Some of them project the names of "real" public figures onto made-up characters in made-up circumstances. Where the names of corporate, media, or political figures are used here, those names are meant only to denote figures, images, the stuff of collective dreams; they do not denote, or pretend to private information about, actual 3-D persons, living, dead, or otherwise." 

(Additional tidbit from the copyright page: "ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF SUPPORT TO: the Mr. and Mrs. Wallace Fund for Aimless Children.")

It's not at all the scathing criticism most of the Europeans and South Americans love to slough onto American culture (while wearing Levis and Nikes). He's not an obnoxious yuppie ex-pat who is sighing on the banks of the Riviera; Foster-Wallace lived in Bloomington, for christ's sake. He loves modern America just as much as he loathes it. 

Still, if it's the magnificent transcendental quality of the last 50 pages of IJ you're looking for, look elsewhere. These stories almost all end on a pretty bleak note. I know it's really easy to confused Dave the author with Dave the depressed person, but c'mon. You can tell the man is struggling with issues way beyond anyone's grasp. Further, the whole meta-meta/post-post thing can get pretty tiring after a while. 

Still though. Couldn't imagine a bigger nerd-crush. 

Miss you terrible, Dave.

Eh?

Today I was reading the Dayton Business Journal (you see the bitter depths of my corporate-job-induced-boredom) and I saw this nugget of grammatical failure.

With the world worrying about its economic woes, today's business strategy is all about saving money and how to survive this "so-called" recession.

(Unrelated tangent: didn't we get past the whole recession/non- thing awhile ago?)

I thought the phrase 'so-called' was intended for use in the wonderfully arrogant these-assholes-know-nothing fashion. I thought scarequotes meant the same thing. (Think Rush Limbaugh: "These socialist pinks claim that they're trying to "save people" and "improve lives" with their arrogant spending plans....turns out the money is for terrorist muslims!"*)

Methinks this is the divide-by-zero rule of prescriptive grammar. Shit'll blow up if they keep this going on. Jerks.

*I made that quote up.

Put a Little Bit of Bitter in your Pink Lemonade

Mad props to The Slote for giving me the hookup to the Harlem Shakes and their debut, Technicolor Health. It's such an infectious little thing. Seeing them live at The Mad Hatter in Covington, KY banished all doubts that a seemingly too charming group of young, affable men that play their instruments really fucking well might be in some way flawed. They're great performers, and great guys! Kendrick (keyboards) and I were only a few feet away, and we chatted the while he was setting up and tearing down--when I went to talk to Lexy, the singer, after the show, he seemingly knew all about me. I guess that words passes quickly when you are the only guy in a club singing every word to every song. Self-love aside, these guys are really cool--you can tell that they're doing it for the music, for themselves, and for the fans. Yay for Ivy League bands!

Hilarious.

The Ivy hierarchy is totally....silly. There's really not another good word for it. On the one hand, Ivy Leaguers are so totally cool: they're totally on the New York indie scene, they've definitely read Rushdie and Yeats' "The Second Coming," and they could probably chat with you on the intricacies of Colonization in Southern Africa, 1884-1969. On the other hand, they're pretentious cocks, and I admit guilt on both counts, though I'd like to think I'm as yet unmarred by too much pretention or cockitude.

The hierarchy is silly because it isn't based on anything other than rumors, hearsay, and the US News and World Report. People consider Harvard the best because A. it is the most selective, B. it has the most money, C. it has the most illustrious grads, and D. its profs are world-renowned for their obscure research. Thus, we have all the people of the world, all 6.2 billion people, who have probably heard the word Harvard at one point or another in their lives, and consider it to be the acme of higher learning.

But all the people of the world don't concern me as much as the few thousand who are associated with the Ivy League, but not with Harvard. One school's narcissistic drive towards purely mechanical output has led to an entire culture of statistic-grubbing and assholery.

This year, Yale, Columbia, Dartmouth, Brown, Harvard, and Cornell enjoyed a sizable drop in admissions, and much self-congratulation ensued (I'm not quite sure why yet, but maybe I'll understand that some day).

Unfortunately (and I say that with my tongue stuck firmly to the inside of my cheek), Penn and gasp Princeton's admission rates went up! This, after years of assurances that I wouldn't get into any colleges because the class of 2009 was just so huge and competitive...

On its own, this isn't a very interesting or shocking statistic. Penn, after all, only increased by .1%. Yet. Yet, the comments on the Daily Pennsylvanian article would have you think that Penn's admit rate was up around 50%: "I guess this means I got a lousier education than I thought," says one comment. This, allegedly from "alumnus," means that after four years (and very possibly more) at one of the premier universities in the world, they considered a rise in admissions a sign that their education wasn't very good. Please pause here and re-read that sentence, then take a deep breath and continue.

Still, overall the comments on Penn's newspaper's website are more concerned with the cogency of the "interactive graph" at the beginning of the article. Now, where the comments really are flipping insane is on the Daily Princetonian.

Princeton saw a .54% increase in admissions this year, and you would think the sky has darkened permanently in Princeton, NJ. "BRT" sums up the position of most of the commenters, albiet a little less vehemently: "Well...that's just embarrassing." The comments, all 267 of them, are mostly '09ers, '10ers, and a whole lot of alums who are straight-up PISSED OFF. They are actually mad. They offer solutions ("fire [admissions dean] Rapelye") but mostly just rant about how Princeton is going downhill. A few '13ers (and soberminded '09ers, '10ers, and alums) try to jump in and state the obvious, that Princeton is still an insanely good school and many would die for this opportunity, not to mention that having a sub-10% admission rate makes them titty-twistingly competitive...

I don't get it. I applied early to Yale using those three indicators of Ivy status: rumor, hearsay, and the US News and World Report. Rumor and hearsay were that despite its number two or three position, Yale had the best undergrad program in the nation and, most importantly, I wouldn't want to either kill myself after my first class (Harvard) or kill myself after meeting my new roommate, Ralph Lauren (Princeton). Maybe I just haven't seen it yet, but I chose Yale because I don't want a bunch of whiny assholes complaining about loss of prestige. I'm sure I'll see it at Yale and I'm sure that not everyone at Princeton and Harvard are intolerable, but it's the impressions that lead to a school's image. If I were a junior on my college search, I'd be disgusted by what I saw on the Daily Princetonian. To me, it screams pettiness, arrogance, and lack of world-view. And to think that it was juniors, seniors, and ALUMS saying most of it made it all the worse.

To get back to what I was saying originally, this hierarchy based on selectivity is simply silly. I would venture to say that all of my TASP friends (with possibly one or two exceptions) had better grades and standardized test scores than me. They were better writers, more well-rounded, more diverse than I. And yet not everyone who applied to Yale got in. Does that make me better or smarter than them? Absolutely and resoundingly not. Hell, one of my friends got rejected from Stanford and Cornell, and then was admitted to Harvard. Does that mean she is smarter than those of us who got rejected from Harvard? No. It doesn't.

It's so easy to get wrapped up in minute percentages, median percentiles, and GPAs that I think those of us in the HYP crowd often forget what makes up a good education. It's a dedicated group of professors with not only a smart, but also a creative and motivated group of students. Just because Yale and Harvard had sub-8% admit rates doesn't mean that Cornell (19.1%) shouldn't be an Ivy League school. I am absolutely certain that there is marginal or no difference between a Cornellian and a Yalie in terms of competence and intelligence.

Don't be a dick, Princeton. Alums and current students are going to make a much stronger impression on prospective students than percentages. If you're so worried about losing your prestige, then it only goes to show that you have very little.

Princeton: http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2009/04/01/23213/comments/?p=2

Penn: http://media.www.dailypennsylvanian.com/media/storage/paper882/news/2009/03/31/News/Admit.Rate.Rises.To.17.1.Percent.Interactive.Graph-3688972.shtml

From the top of my head...comin' out of the water...

Grizzly Bear rocks. There are no two ways around it. They're so deliciously weird, so totally different, yet still entirely listenable that it makes me want to clap my hands and jump up and down. Then it occurs to me that that would be totally lame.

There's something decidedly haunting about their music; make no mistake about it. It's not exactly the fist-pumping shit you put on before a tennis match or a heist, but damn if it doesn't feel good in that no-matter-what-I-do-my-legs-are-moving-of-their-own-accord. Not to say that it's dance-y, by any means, but simply that they're the sort of band that slowly seeps into your ears, crawls down your external auditory meatus, slips past your ear drum, and then fucking explodes in your hypothalamus.  

Their latest album, Veckatimest, is truly an experience. Southern Point, the opening track, just kind of drops in on you--jangling guitar strings and taps on the Chris Bear's ride cymbals feels like more of a middle-of-the-album slowdown type song, until around 1:00. The guitar and drums slowly build, pause, and then come crashing out. Never once does Dan Rossen stop his fingers from performing their intricate dance around his guitar's fretboard. He lets loose with "in the end/you'll never find me now" sounding like he's trapped in your shower upstairs while simultaneously pouring your mother a glass of Shiraz, telling her that she'll never "come to him." I think this speaks for Grizzly Bear as a whole--their music is truly a conversation with the listener. Sure, it's torturous at times, but it's because they actually mean it.

And then you meet the alter ego of Grizzly Bear. Fittingly enough, the second track on the album, Two Weeks, gives you just that. When I saw them perform last year, I was most struck by the fact that Chris Bear, their drummer and producer, was perhaps the most unique and musical of the lot. Having been a drummer for many years--and a depraved egoist for many more--I've always had a beef with the fact that drummers, while entirely integral, never have as much creative joy as the other instrumentalists. Chris Bear proves me wrong. Two Weeks  is probably Grizzly Bear's best song, and Bear is more than a minor influence on that. His drums dance an odd-military march meets art-house syncopation. It's as though he learned to play on pots and pans strewn around the kitchen, and adapted this model for the kit. At their show, he played without a kick drum. I was agog. The kickdrum, the literal heartbeat of the set, and he managed to do without. Beautiful. Anyway--Two Weeks is thus foundation-ed by Bear's snare chops. The roofing of this metaphorical palace is simple enough--a synth made to sound as a slightly flat and tinny piano, followed by a beautifully minimal Rhodes organ providing support columns. (I'm sick of the house metaphor.) But, but, but--the most fucking important and glaringly obvious aspect of Grizzly Bear's music are the voices. Two Weeks is sung, actually and completely sung, by Ed Droeste, founding member and lead man extraordinaire. His voice is a mellow and haunting baritone, almost burlesque-meets-opera. Droeste also does part of his backup vocals, providing a fascinating counterpoint to his voice during the pre-chorus. He is introduced, met and matched by a ghostly choir of Rossen, Bear, and Chris Taylor (multi-instrumentalist...I've seen him play bass, guitar, clarinet, and just sing). They harmonize so fucking well. It's really a jaw-dropping experience. Despite the cliche of admitting cliche, this band makes me want to cry I love them so much. (I forget which one, but one of them admitted to a lot of stupid fights over harmonies during the making of Yellow House.) 

That statement of amour may seem trite in the arms-crossed crowd of Indie music, but there's no denying that a band like Grizzly Bear, with a song like Two Weeks, is at once magnificent, heraldic, and simply sublime. They're impossible to label; maybe that's what draws me back. 

The rest of the album returns to type-A Grizzly Bear, heavily reverberated guitars and the Dan-Ed duo, softly beating drums and dark tones out of the bass, until, like in All We Ask, the paint is finally thrown on the canvas and the stage lights up. It's at once folky and kind of hardcore. There are other highlights on the album (the pulsating, driving beat and old-school sci-fi tones of Ready, Able; the Spanish-guitar-influenced About Face, and of course; While You Wait for the Others, one of my favorite songs of all time), but more than anything, it's a stellar album in that you have to sit down and really listen to it. It's good for reading to, writing to, thinking to, and grooving to, but it's not the type of thing you can go all the way with while you are driving or trying to entertain guests. Sometimes the folksy and depressing tunes found in the middle of the album can drag a bit if proper attention isn't paid them, and sometimes Grizzly Bear just doesn't fit the mood. But fear not: after your first listen, there's nothing that would fit the mood besides Veckatimest. 

(What exactly that mood is, I couldn't say. Just buy the fucking album already.)

The Oscars....

1. I hated "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." I hate it even more now for the sheer number of Oscars it was nominated for (more than Citizen Kane, I believe).

1 a. Don't worry; I love F. Scott Fitzgerald.

2. That vampire tramp from that trampy tramp-lit phenomenon-cum-trampy film looked like a complete fool. You're not actually a vampire.

3. Horsey-face looked especially horsey and awful tonight. Highlights were: her wonder-bra'd boobs, her prom-esque dress, and her horsey-face.

4. Dustin Lance Black has really small hands.

5. That "romance" montage was adorable. Though "The Wrestler" is 2009, isn't it?

6. I didn't watch the whole show. I'm sure I missed some especially poignant moments of mutual masturbation between Hollywood elites :(

7. That Animated Short looks really cool.

While You Were Sleeping

I'm not even going to pretend that I know how to write an album review, so I'm not going to. I really, really like the music they play on This American Life. (Take it a step back--I really, really like Ira Glass. Two steps? This American Life. Three steps? PRI. Four steps? You get the picture.) I was listening to an episode (on podcast; I cannot make it anywhere on time, thus the thought that I can listen to a radio show on time is quite amusing) on sleep (too many fucking parenthetical asides....sorry) and one of the interludes played Elvis Perkins' song "While You Were Sleeping." Now, at the time--in the car, sweaty and mildly pissed from a crappy night of tennis--I didn't know it was Elvis Perkins, but I did know that it was a really captivating song.

It's pretty simple, really. Acoustic guitar, brushes on a muted drum set, a stand-up bass, Perkins, and later, some awesome trumpet (maybe coronet?). Really, nothing too special. Even Perkin's voice, a touch haunting and possibly a hint of a western accent(?), sounds like he spent hours in front of the stereo, memorizing Neutral Milk Hotel licks and yowling like a cat until he sounded like Jeff Magnum.

Back to the thesis--the song is really fucking good. You should acquire it.

So I bought the album, Ash Wednesday. Pretty rash of me, but like I said, I was really digging this song. Every review I read was into the album, but more importantly, they were all jazzed about Perkins himself. Son of Hollywood big shot who dies tragically when Elvis is a wee lad; Brown drop out (typical); son of a Hollywood actress who dies tragically in one of the 9/11 planes. He's certainly got a lot of material to work with, but frankly I thought the album was a little lame.

A few months later, I was doing a project on Sylvia Plath for my English class. I out-nerded myself and acquired five books of essays on her work--most of the better essays were written in this century. My feelings about the Post-Structuralists wax and wane, but Susan Van Dyne, a Plath scholar at Smith (beloved Sylvia's alma mater), argues passionately in "The Problem of Biography" that everyone spends way more time on Plath's biography than on her skills as a poet, or even her poetry. It struck me that the same thing happened with Ash Wednesday--every reviewer (with some notable exceptions, found only post-disappointment) spent at least half of the review talking about Perkins' tragic past. And c'mon, after that, how are you supposed to pan a stylistically uninspired album? Or maybe they just stopped at While You Were Sleeping.

Crime and Punishment

I'm incredibly grateful that for the first time (ever) I have an English teacher that kicks major ass. Sometimes it can be a touch frustrating (I've the only XY chromosome set in the class of 10), but we just started Crime and Punishment and I have to say I'm pretty intrigued.

I've always taken it upon myself to devour books that aren't necessarily easy to read. I find it stimulating, and the bragging rights are always a nice bonus. Russian lit, ironically, was the first big tackle that I attempted. Together with a friend, I "founded" (read: had the intention of founding) a book club, intended to attract members of our class to come discuss literature and prove to the world at large that reading really is cool. Unfortunately, our first and last administrative decision was to assign Anna Karenina as the first novel on our list.

Long story short, everyone got hopelessly bored around Book Three, during which a lot of nothing occurs. Around Book Five, I felt like I was possibly the only person in the world who had made it to Book Five. Here's the point, I guess. I really didn't feel anything for it at the time (reading in fits and bursts of 10 pages at a time doesn't really count as reading), but now that I'm trying to hunt through for some good quotes, all I have is good memories.

Which is not to say that I'm being some pretentious cock. It's actually good. It's emotional--you can really relate to Anna, even if you've never cheated, been married, had a child, gone to the races, or even been to Russia. You can relate because you know every single fucking detail about her life. Tolstoy wants you to be inside her (zing!). The picture may be worth a thousand words, but a thousand pages of Tolstoy is worth a lot more than 300 pictures.

I'm also not trying to encourage anyone to pick up Anna Karenina. Because let's be honest: who has the time for the uber-novel anymore? It just isn't accessible, which is both a travesty and an "oh well" moment. Maybe all the lessons Tolstoy wanted to teach have been learned. Maybe not.

But I digress. After AK, I took a serious break from the Russians. I was looking forward to Crime and Punishment with my English teacher, and so far she hasn't let me down. I'd heard that what Tolstoy says in 500 pages, Dostoevsky says in 5. I've found that this isn't the case at all, however. If Tolstoy is the tenured professor in tweed whom everyone loves and who's picked up the hot Asian researcher, Dostoevsky is the PhD candidate who is lightyears farther along in his intellectual development than Dr. Tweeds is, but lacks all social skills and has a very nasty and unfortunate mole on his nose (I'm going to throw in a few gnarly hairs as well). This is not to say that Tolstoy hasn't earned that tenureship--Anna Karenina and War and Peace are often looked to as the premier exponents of the novel form of writing--but Dostoevsky broke entirely new ground. I'm sure I'm missing things from this first reading (class discussion, after all, is primarily composed of "Like, I think Rask ["-olnikov," I mutter under my breath, thoroughly peeved and arrogant] is like completely unsure whether or not to be emotional and weak or macho"), but simply reading it has given me a sense of sheer pleasure. Tolstoy's descriptions are first rate, but again and again you get the sense that you are reading a film script ("Sergey Ivanovitch asked for all the details the princess knew about the young man, and going into the first-class waiting-room, wrote a note the the person on whom the granting of leave of absence depended, and handed it to the princess.") Thus it is the essential importance of the story that reigns supreme. But Dostoevsky..."Both were silent. Razumihin was more than ecstatic and Raskolnikov perceived it with repulsion. He was alarmed, too, by what Razumihin had just said about Porfiry."

Tolstoy, I think, works the heart and soul, while Dostoevsky works the mind.

I think this post is too long to assume that anyone will even glance past the second sentence (Hah! Assuming people are even reading this!), but I think now is a better place than ever to stop my rambling.