Confessions of a Gift-Ribbon Samurai

Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession

2011-03-29T10:40:00.000-07:00

It's not a fair criticism of Xan Cassavetes's Z Channel: A Magnificent Obessession that I would have preferred a greater focus on Z Channel and a lesser focus on the personal story of Jerry Harvey. That's mostly my own fascination with process and milieu. I could easily imagine watching a "cable channel procedural." The glimpses the film offers into the world of cable television in the 1970s and 1980s utterly drew me in.

The personal story is fascinating, though, and give the film much of its power. We apparently have Jerry Harvey primarily to thank for the concept of "the director's cut" in general and for several important director's cuts in specific. But he also murdered his wife. A tension exists between a film fan's natural desire to celebrate the accomplishments of Harvey's decade-long run as a successful and influential champion of cinema and the human instinct to shun a muderer. Cassavetes obviously had to reach a decision as to the balance point between those instincts, but she doesn't explicitly deal with the decision, forcing viewers to consider it for themselves.

Maybe my preference for more focus on the channel and less on the man is a dodge, revealing my own discomfort the question of where to place that balance point.

Meme: 20 Albums That Changed Your Life

2011-03-29T10:24:00.000-07:00

Apparently I won't blog regularly. Oh well, I'm gonna give it one more shot, starting the cheap way with one of those make-a-list memes.
20 Albums That Changed Your Life

Think of 20 albums that had such a profound effect on you that they changed your life or the way you looked at it. They sucked you in and took you over for days, weeks, months, years. These are the albums that you can use to identify time, places, people, emotions. These are the albums that, no matter what they were thought of musically, shaped your world. When you finish, tag 20 others, including me. Make sure you copy and paste this part so they know the drill. Get the idea now? Good. Tag, you're it!

In the order that I thought of them:
1. Billy Joel, Greatest Hits, Vol. 1 & 2 -- this was my first CD (double CD, actually)

2. Gin Blossoms, New Miserable Experience -- listened to it incessantly, particularly got into the song "Found Out About You," which was just the right kind of melodramatic to punctuate a first breakup

3. Rush, Roll the Bones -- though hard-core Rush fans would be aghast, this is album is what Rush is to me

4. Pulp, Different Class -- sarcasm and bitterness perfectly expressed and set to very, very good music

5. Morphine, Cure for Pain -- the first time I understood the importance of choice of instruments

6. Bad Religion, Stranger Than Fiction -- the first punk album I got into

7. Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon -- the first (and, honestly, only) album for which I bought a fuzzy poster of the cover

8. Original Cast (1998 Broadway Revival), Cabaret -- Kander & Ebb at their best and Alan Cumming audibly chewing the scenery

9. David Bowie Sound and Vision (boxed set) -- sort of a bridge between the greatest hits package and actual albums, has several of my all-time favorite songs on it.

10. Billy Bragg & Wilco, Mermaid Ave., Vol. 1 -- the first folky album I got into

11. Dwight Yoakam, dwightyoakamacoustic.net -- I became a country music fan when I heard this album playing in the Singing Dog record store across the street from OSU.

12. Johnny Cash, American III: Solitary Man -- the first contemporary Johnny Cash album I ever bought (might have been the first non-compilation Cash album I bought, too

13. Luxx, Luxx -- the first studio album by a band that will always basically be a live act to me. They never really hit it big, and the album doesn't quite capture how good the live show was, but it's still a good album, so if you run across a copy somehow, pick it up.

14. The Sounds, Dying to Say This to You -- Perhaps the strongest single piece of evidence for my theory that the Swedes know how to rock.

15. James, Laid -- my first Britpop album

16. Tom Russell, Hotwalker -- perfect blend of music and spoken word

17. The Knitters, Poor Little Critter on the Road -- the X side-project that I like better than I like X

18. The Killers, Hot Fuss -- I bought this album because I knew I wanted several songs on it and while listening to it the first time I kept finding myself saying "Wait, that song's the Killers, too?"

19. Treat Her Right, The Anthology: 1985-1990 -- the album on which Mark Sandman introduced me to Dave Champagne

20. The Raconteurs, Broken Boy Soldiers -- is it really a short album when it's half an hour of awesome?

Konrath Crafts a More Thrilling Thriller

2010-06-24T17:32:00.000-07:00

Shot of Tequila by J. A. Konrath, Kindle Edition

The product description for the Kindle edition of J. A. Konrath's Shot of Tequila promises a slight departure from Konrath's usual style. I'm not sure I've read enough of his work to offer a general opinion, but Shot of Tequila's tone is certainly a bit darker than that of Whiskey Sour. Konrath's trademark humor makes the transition, though slightly subdued, as befitting the overall mood. I tend to prefer crime novels that focus on the wrong side of the law, so it's no major surprise that I preferred Tequila to Whiskey.

My only real complaint perhaps relates back to the book's unusual path to publication, and that is that one more pass by a proofreader may have been beneficial. Within a single fight scene and over the course of only a few pages, the same combatant is twice said to have been "energized" by events of the fight. Detective Daniel reads a suspect's police record, which states that he is 5'6" in height, but later tells another character the suspect is 5'5". A character is said to have "settled for a five Demerol injections[.]" Presumably most of these errors and issues would have been "caught" during during the traditional publishing process. That they slipped into an ebook by a traditionally-published professional author may be indicative of a weakness of the format itself, though without the format it seems unlikely we'd have ever gotten the book, even in this slightly imperfect version.

Konrath has crafted a real winner here, and I hope that its new life as an ebook prompts further visits with organized crime elements in the "Jack Daniels Universe."

The Age of Innocence

2010-06-22T16:36:00.000-07:00

In my long-ago days as an English major, I may have been equipped to discuss Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence in a manner that would do it justice. I fear that the words I have at my disposal this days are likely insufficient. Nonetheless, The Age of Innocence must be praised, even if insufficiently.

The French have a phrase, "esprit de l'escalier" (literally "the wit of the staircase"), that describes the feeling of thinking of exactly the correct response when it is only just too late to make it. I've loved this phrase since I first encountered it years ago, and always despaired that English doesn't quite have a phrase to match. Obviously I had never read The Age of Innocence, because Wharton closes Chapter 12 with what may now be may favorite phrase: "bursting with the belated eloquence of the inarticulate." English does not have the match of esprit de l'escalier, it has its better.

The entire second half of Chapter 32 contains an extended metaphor, by which Wharton beautifully juxtaposes the dirtying and tearing of May's wedding dress with Newland's long-delayed realization that she is not the complete innocent for whom he took her.

In the final chapter Wharton contrasts Newland's reticence with the freedom enjoyed by his son, Dallas. It is by watching and listening to Dallas, and examining the lives the two of them have created for themselves and the choices they have made that Newland realizes how unprepared he was, even in his youth, to allow himself what he wanted.

Wharton writes that Newland "had to deal all at once with the packed regrets and stifled memories of an inarticulate lifetime." Perhaps that notion of the packed regrets and stifled memories of an inarticulate life is what made The Age of Innocence sing to me. Before the notion is named in the final chapter, the reader has watched the Newland miss the opportunities he regrets, seen the occasions whose memory Newland stifles.
I'm drawn the literature of regret, the literature of missed opportunity, of reticence. Where J. Alfred Prufrock does not think the mermaids will sing to him, two mermaids sing to Newland Archer, one whose song he will not allow himself to hear and another whose song he would rather not hear. I'm not certain Newland or Prufrock is the better off.

Love is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time by Rob Sheffield

2010-06-22T16:24:00.000-07:00

Love is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time by Rob Sheffield

In Love is a Mix Tape, Rob Sheffield has crafted a book that is at once sad, beautiful and romantic.

I don't suppose I can know that Rob Sheffield and Renée Crist had the kind of love that everyone dreams about, but they certainly had the kind of love I dream about. If one wonders whether it would be worse to lose a love like Sheffield had after too few too short years than to never have had it, the sheer beauty of Sheffield's tribute to Crist puts lie to the notion. A love capable of inspiring a book like this must be worth the pain of loss.

I reveal nothing when I reveal that Renée Crist died young. That's spelled out from the beginning, lending the entire affair an air of tragedy, adding a touch of bitter to every taste of the sweet. Throughout I was reminded of the poetry of the Romantic movement.

Renée Crist canst not leave her song, nor ever can her trees be bare;
Forever wilt Rob Sheffield love, and she be fair.

J. A. Konrath and Whiskey Sour

2010-06-22T15:04:00.000-07:00

I just finished Whiskey Sour by J. A. Konrath, a serial killer / police procedural novel, the first featuring Konrath's series character Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels. I'm not a big series mystery reader. I believe I have read one Alex Cross novel several years ago, so even when Konrath initially caught my attention by way of his very cool blog, A Newbie's Guide to Publishing, I didn't necessarily plan on checking out the Jack Daniels novels.

Apparently "pre-published" is either a new, softer, term for "unpublished," or a subset of "unpublished" that only includes stuff the author actually intends to get published. This is writer lingo I picked up from Konrath's blog. I was drawn to Konrath's blog because lately, after not really thinking about it for years, I've again started thinking it would be fun to get something I've written published. Now, I don't think I would qualify as "pre-published" because I don't really have anything ready to intend to get published, but the definitely has me thinking in that direction. Konrath's extensive discussion of his own experience publishing to the Kindle spurred me to make my first Kindle purchase, and it seemed only fair to give that sale to Konrath, so I ordered his ebook The Newbie's Guide to Publishing (notice that definite article -- clearly superior to the blog).

At several points in The Newbie's Guide, Konrath turns to his own fiction for illustrative excerpts, and those excerpts piqued my interest enough to convince me to try out one of Konrath's short story collections, Crime Stories, which was available for just a couple dollars for the Kindle. To be honest, much of the short fiction didn't do a whole lot for me, but I liked Konrath's voice enough that I decided to give Whiskey Sour a shot and picked up the paperback. All of which appears to prove a point that Konrath makes again and again on his blog -- cheap ebooks are an easy sell and can also route readers to more expensive print books.

Will I Keep Up Again?

2010-06-22T13:57:00.000-07:00

I no longer keep up with my old blog at MySpace, but I'm going to give it another shot. Will I keep up again?

Taken (2008)

2009-04-23T09:58:00.000-07:00

As Liam Neeson says in Taken, he has a very particular set of skills. Primary among those skills is an uncanny ability to punch a dude in the throat. It was all I could do not to run and grab a turtle neck after watching this movie. If I ever meet Liam Neeson I'm definitely going to try to protect my throat.
Taken is breathtakingly outlandish. Liam Neeson goes on what can only be described as a rampage through France. Roughly two thirds of the characters in the movie are punched in the throat, killed or punched in the throat and killed.

The '59 Sound

2009-03-28T10:01:00.000-07:00

If your musical tastes align at all with mine you really, really need to check out The '59 Sound by The Gaslight Anthem. Putting aside the fact that "The Gaslight Anthem" is a great name for a rock band, and that "The '59 Sound" is a great title for a rock album, the album is great. No song is less-than-decent, and more than half are genuinely good songs, two of which are excellent and at least one of which is transcendent.

"Here's Looking at You, Kid" reminds me a bit of Morphine's "In Spite of Me," albeit with a more traditional instrumentation.

Then there's "The '59 Sound." This is The Song right now, the kind of song that makes my blood vibrate.

Several the songs from The '59 Sound are on the YouTube. Go listen to them. Then listen to the songs from their first album, Sink or Swim, which has a slightly stronger punk influence. I like it almost as much as I like The '59 Sound.

Overheard at Kohl's

2008-09-22T11:00:00.000-07:00

Overheard this afternoon at Kohl's, a statement that at least three times out of four is one that you don't want to hear:

"Well, you didn't find that out until after you slept with her."

Would that I could have been there . . .

2007-09-07T12:25:00.000-07:00

They're interviewing Tom Russell on Sirius 63 at the moment. He just said that he played the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Would that I could have been there.

I spent about three days at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August, 2001. I had never been to (and haven't been to since) a performing arts festival, so I have no basis for comparison in that sense, but it was one of the most fun experiences I ever had. It was wall-to-wall plays, musicals, stand up performances and one-man shows.

I was in Edinburgh with a friend, but her plan was to see the sights during the day and see shows at night. The draw of the stage was too much for me, though. I didn't see a single castle or museum while in Edinburgh. I can't recall what all I saw, but I can remember some. Margaret Cho when she still did comedy. Emo Phillips. A play that the fliers described as "Tarrantinoesque," and which, I suppose was, at least to the same extent that all those movies in the late nineties were. A guy who did a multiple character one-man show with his head sticking out of the top of a box, that he'd pull his head back into from time to time to do a wig-change. A musical about the British equivalent of a high school, with half a dozen or so English college students in school-girl uniforms. That's just what I can remember fairly clearly. There was quite a bit more.

The weather was gray, cool and occaisonally rainy, which somehow seems appropriate to a performing arts festival. The notion of stepping from cool, cloudy conditions across a threshhold into a theater warm with body heat, the stage as bright as the sky was not, is so perfect that I'm not sure I trust my memory.

Every August since 2001 I've wished I was in Edinburgh. Like I said, I don't have sufficient basis for comparison to say that the Fringe is really the top of the heap when it comes to performing arts festivals, but I'm not sure anything could ever compare to the first I ever attended.

Take a step back, there Tim . . .

2007-09-02T12:34:00.000-07:00

I heard Tim McGraw's new song, "I Need You" (featuring Faith Hill!) this evening. In it he sings:
"I wanna drink that shot of whiskey.
I wanna smoke that cigarette.
I wanna smell that sweet addiction on my breath.
I wanna ride across West Virginia in the back seat of a Cadillac.
You know some cowboys like me go out like that."

Some cowboys like me? Forget that cigarette, Tim. You've apparently been smoking something a little stronger. I mean to compare oneself to Hank Williams is a ballsy maneuver. But Tim doesn't have time for half measures. He's not saying that Tim is like Hank, he's saying Hank is like Tim.