January 2012
2 posts
Breaking radio silence to post “The...
I Wrote About the Skoal Kodiak Album For Dusted →
This was only put online a couple of days ago, but I wrote it about a month and a half ago; it’s grown on me a bunch since. Especially with the recent revelation that the vocals sound like a strange, modulated version of Jon Spencer. This review is not very good, because there are a lot of pretty irritating surface-level breakbeat-type things about the record that I hadn’t let myself...
December 2011
5 posts
The Internet
Where you’ll come up with an idea to play Kind of Blue and Bitches Brew on top of one another, calling it Kind of Brew, and it’ll have already been done. I had come up with a hilarious half-joke about how all jazz sounds exactly the same and everything.
I Reviewed the New Batman Video Game For Paste... →
I recently got into a messageboard argument about Skyrim1 when I should have been working. It led, more or less directly, to an opportunity to do this. Let that be a lesson to you.
1Skyrim isn’t a good game, per se. It’s just really, really good at having and displaying all the big obvious signposts people have for a “good game,” much the same way that strong Oscar...
November 2011
1 post
September 2011
1 post
August 2011
4 posts
“It took me about three or four weeks to toilet train my cat, Nightlife. Most of...”
– It is one thing that Charles Mingus wrote a short guide about how to toilet train your cat. It is another thing entirely that Achewood didn’t make up the fact that his cat was named Nightlife.
July 2011
4 posts
1 tag
A Slice of Life
The other day I bought this book of Ray Bradbury short stories, and I know you’re supposed to say that there aren’t bad stories, only bad storytellers, but let’s just say there exists a published short story where:
A couple is sitting in bed and they hear a distant wail that they immediately parse as the wail of a “ghost baby,” so they assume it’s the ghost...
“Anyway, the new thing from the Gootch makes it really easy to sort people into...”
– Paul Ford on Google+ is a must-read.
“When Charlie meets a homeless boy he attacks him and rips off his limbs for a...”
– IMDB’s Parents Guide for All Dogs Go to Heaven.
June 2011
8 posts
So, I Review Albums For Dusted Sometimes, Now →
Above is a link to my review of Psychedelic Horseshit’s Laced, which went up today. I actually debuted last month with a review of the new Grouper record or records or whatever the situation is with that, but I don’t have a clue what to say about that type of music, so I’m not sure it came out very good. (The album itself, however, is pretty good.) In any case, it feels nice to...
1 tag
“Charles Darwin’s friends understood that his uncontrollable retching and farting...”
– Stephen Shapiro’s history of digestive problems, Gutted, sounds pretty good. And kudos, of course, go to him for getting the London Review of Books to print the word “farting.”
2 tags
“Expressiveness, in humans, is mutable. We can get better at it. And when we get...”
– I feel like the phrase “good interview with George Saunders” is kind of redundant, but good interview with George Saunders.
Yo La Tengo - Let’s Save Tony...
1 tag
May 2011
3 posts
“I think part of the sexual harassment stuff was location.”
– I haven’t yet bought that book about ESPN that came out today, but apparently former ESPN Chairman Steve Bornstein thinks the place where I spent the first eighteen years of my life is to blame for ESPN’s “frathouse mentality.” You might remember my hometown for such 2011...
Thoughts On Phil Jackson's Retirement
My old friend Adam is one of those guys who knows more about music than God, but whose taste invariably sticks towards unimpeachable classics and well-knowns. While the rest of our group of friends, circa 2005 or so, would be fawning over some 7” somebody got, Adam would be listening to, and talking everyone’s ear off about, Elvis Costello, Bruce Springsteen or, his favorite, The...
April 2011
7 posts
Hi.
My apartment is currently without power (long story, upshot is that my roommates and I are dumb) and thus my 2000’s-addled mind cannot distract itself from any of the stupid shit it comes up with. In turn, much in the same way one might “Tumbl” a bad pop song that gets stuck in one’s head, I will share:
-What the city of Seattle will do when Dubai inevitably builds an...
“Styrene, who was born Marian Joan Elliott-Said, shot to fame in 1976 with X-Ray...”
– Cheers to The Guardian, who certainly did not miss any part of the point when writing their Poly Styrene obituary.
“Once we stayed with this couple who were putting us on in Wales. Their...”
– Vice interviewed the singer of Oi Polloi, who are celebrating their thirtieth anniversary on the same day as the royal wedding. The man has stories.
“X-Ray Eyeballs are good, but the sound is so shitty that when I look back at the...”
– If you haven’t yet read Lars Finberg’s account of playing South by Southwest: It is Friday and nobody cares if you are working. Now is the time. Also, if anyone has any inroads on me becoming friends with Lars Finberg, my contact information is easily found.
“Blind Mexican cavefish sleep much less than closely related species that live...”
– Science.
Old Time Relijun - Two Crows
Imagine the...
March 2011
5 posts
Arthur Russell - “Time Away”
1)The...
1 tag
“In my psychology sessions, I sometimes cry with my therapist. We cry and hug...”
– Ron Artest on the Miami Heat’s alleged postgame locker room cry sessions. I love professional basketball and I love Ron Artest.
“I was kinda bummed that [Gary Busey’s] ringer was set to the classic...”
– Tom Scharpling has started writing Celebrity Apprentice recaps for New York Magazine.
pterodactyls asked: What's the last thing you did on a crazy whim, and how did it work out for you?
Stereolab - The Seeming and the Meaning
When I...
February 2011
8 posts
1 tag
“It’s no big deal if a black cat crosses my path. After all, I’ve got a black cat...”
– Some genius has officially begun translating Haruki Murakami and Shigesato Itoi’s collaborative short story collection Let’s Meet In a Dream. I’ve been waiting for this for a really long time.
WatchThis is part two of the video that VBS made about my friends. I have much less to add about this one, primarily because I wrote my previous entry assuming that this footage would be included, but I can corroborate the fact that Ryan got his neck tattooed that way because he thought male flamingos were blue. That is my old house, and the shirt I’m wearing in this video ripped recently....
WatchAlmost four years ago, Lance Bangs shot a short documentary about my friend Ryan Z at my old house and my current roommates’ old house in Allston, Massachusetts. While I am vaguely aware of how Bangs was informed of Ryan’s existence, to this day I’m not sure anyone knows why he was chosen as a subject in a documentary series that has also profiled the likes of Thurston Moore, No Age, and Fred...
1 tag
Dance Disaster Movement - Got the Piece of Mine...
January 2011
4 posts
pterodactyls asked: What is your signature dance move? If you don't have one, describe what you'd like to happen when the song "Teach Me How To Lemon Ice Forever" comes on.
Cops: Flatulence Behind Fatal Stabbing In Bristol →
Well, this is certainly a thing that took place in my hometown. That much is for certain.