tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-59746122012-01-31T23:53:48.631-05:00Trying to not be a waste of people's timeBrianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.comBlogger6311100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-52617081874539586252012-01-19T22:29:00.001-05:002012-01-20T00:59:53.436-05:00

2011 has turned into 2012 on the Julian Calendar, and as we have less than a year until The End Of The Way Things Are, people take stock of 2011, the last full year we will have, and attempt to simplify it into list form, even as the nature of current economic structures means that there has been too much to appraise. Many contenders for the best films of last year (The Last Year) have not even

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-2200482306764415712011-12-07T18:44:00.005-05:002011-12-12T01:48:33.767-05:00

It is approaching the end of the year, and people are making their lists of top albums, as the cycle of leaks and hype presupposes that very little of interest will come to light in the last days that is not a prelude of grander things to come. I have made my own private list of notable records, culled from an iTunes playlist and a look at my shelves, to try to preempt any word from an official

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-20604267652677460012011-11-14T19:09:00.003-05:002011-11-17T00:08:52.485-05:00

That intelligence leads to alienation is a tale often told in our culture, in no small part by people congratulating themselves for their lack of interpersonal skills. Certainly, trying to communicate ideas that have been thought through to a greater degree than is expected in a world of memes and accepted narratives is not going to be rewarding the speaker with increased social capital. And to

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-9755425611745917632011-10-13T03:04:00.002-04:002011-10-13T03:37:02.967-04:00

In the past few weeks, I've been spending time down by Baltimore's McKeldin Fountain, as part of the Occupy Baltimore movement, in solidarity with New York City's Occupy Wall Street group. One rallying cry is "We Are The 99%," referring to the statistically proven fact that 1% of Americans control a majority of the wealth in the country. What's funny is how often we, as Americans, are split into

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-38256043128101285632011-09-25T22:24:00.003-04:002011-09-27T11:00:36.915-04:00

I didn't attend the Small Press Expo this year, due in part to former travel companion Adam Boysen having left Baltimore for the west coast, but the very passing of the event means that comic book Oscar season is upon us, to use a phrase coined by Mothers News. The book I am most excited to read is the collection of Matthew Thurber's 1-800-Mice, wrapping up using material previously unpublished.

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-34455662145840590422011-07-22T20:46:00.000-04:002011-07-22T21:56:31.280-04:00

Halfway through another year where online music magazines are talking about the best of the year thus far and posting lists of neglected records which are not that neglected in that they received some coverage from online music magazines, my little corner of the world is as small as the corner record store where local yokels peddle their wares. The store I am talking about is The True Vine in

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-31294588399600487822011-07-05T20:28:00.000-04:002011-07-06T00:56:52.679-04:00

I received a review copy of Jaakko Pallasvuo "PYYTÄJÄT," sent from Finland, and am please to announce that it is pretty damn good, worthy of your attentions if you are one who has thought about ordering comics from Finland. (I have!) The hand-lettering is in Finnish, but the dialogue is translated at the bottom of the page, in a closed-captioning effect which might not always be effective, but is

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-13956937150276693262011-06-22T00:02:00.000-04:002011-06-22T01:16:19.166-04:00

A few weeks ago DC Comics sent out a press release announcing that all of their comics would be relaunched with new first issues and that this would allow for something fresh and accessible to the masses of contemporary culture. A week or two after that, the writers and artists that would be behind the coming avalanche of product were announced, along with images displaying what the art would

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-68250355061412474832011-05-19T21:44:00.000-04:002011-05-19T22:46:53.425-04:00

The first time I saw the preview clip for Ben Jones' Cartoon Network show, The Problem Solverz, show up on Youtube, I felt crazy, like something in reality I had taken for granted had been undermined. The show felt "off," in a way which was sort of like an Invasion Of The Body Snatchers scenario: Uploaded to the Paperrad Youtube channel, looking really great, but moving according to this formula

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-83712475807452892492011-04-28T20:20:00.000-04:002011-04-28T20:28:49.492-04:00

I just read a thing that I am pretty much convinced I will be thinking about a lot in the days to come. It's a new story, posted on Pitchfork, about Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel writing a score for a thought-controlled synthesizer, that was performed by Robert Schneider (of the Apples In Stereo and the inventor of the instrument in question) and Robert Beatty (of Hair Police and Three Legged

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-8429871636813968052011-04-02T16:01:00.000-04:002011-04-02T16:12:01.385-04:00

This Micachu And The Shapes record with the London Sinfonietta, "Chopped and Screwed" might be the best record of 2011. A pop band, whose first record was produced by Matthew Herbert, doing a live one-off collaboration with a strings and woodwind ensemble to emulate the sound of DJ Screw, it ends up being really rich and beautiful, but maybe not satisfying to people expecting a pop record. I can

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-39395736481168689522011-02-22T14:21:00.000-05:002011-02-27T00:46:35.039-05:00

Someone I know has been asking the question "Do you think The Strokes were influential?" It sounds sarcastic to hear it said aloud. Sonically, their music feels like a dead end, a rock band among many, at the start of a decade that was maybe most highlighted by the integration of computer technology and acoustic sound sources.Over at The AV club, Steven Hyden just completed writing an overview of

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-36316448213032122262011-02-08T17:24:00.001-05:002011-02-08T17:30:09.865-05:00

Full screen this.Meditate.

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-7108796543393035872011-01-18T17:03:00.000-05:002011-01-18T17:31:48.938-05:00

Recently I returned to the United States from a ten-day stint in Israel. It was called a Birthright trip, which I find a little obnoxious, but it was a free trip paid for by, I believe, the Israeli government and some wealthy American Jews, so I will accept their nomenclature. Since being back in the USA, most conversations I've had about the trip have involved responding to knee-jerk cynicism,

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-76782685871697874382011-01-17T03:18:00.000-05:002011-01-18T17:03:22.625-05:00

These are my favorite comics of 2010. It's guided by what came out this year, but alludes to work from years prior, as a rough guide to what feels contemporary. To make this a top ten, please reserve places for Chris Ware's latest Acme Novelty Library and Edie Fake's Gaylord Phoenix, as yet unread. To better imagine a guide to comics I read this year that feel contemporary, please be aware of

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-80988211758514802212010-12-10T11:52:00.001-05:002010-12-23T02:07:26.712-05:00

Music, like any art, consists of component parts. At a base level is sound, traditionally made on instruments, turning into melodies, contrasting with others, turning into songs, given meaning by lyrics, collected into albums, existing in a cultural context, made by human beings. Over time, the idea of what constitutes "good music" has become increasingly complicated- the set of values of rock

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-61537826574331152372010-10-26T22:56:00.000-04:002010-10-27T01:05:32.193-04:00

Netflix has abandoned its "Community" features, which means that all of my compulsory ratings of movies I watch is now just myself, muttering into a void, helping only to aid a mathematical algorithm which seems to function pretty well already. Surely I have rated enough things at this point for my opinions to become predictable. Here's the latest things you could've already imagined I would have

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-55300077657044849772010-10-08T01:15:00.000-04:002010-10-08T02:04:42.413-04:00

The drug experience Gaspar Noe's Enter The Void comes closest to is the moment when you've been high for quite some time and are now looking at your watch to see how much longer it will be before you can do something else more productive. There comes a point when you know that the rest of the movie will continue on much the same way it has already progressed, and there will be no scenes or

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-22056936763750696442010-10-06T01:09:00.000-04:002010-10-06T02:26:19.114-04:00

Aidan Koch is a lady who I'm fairly certain attended The Evergreen State College at the same time I did. She is my age, if not in terms of specifics, than in terms of generalities; which is to say, young. I have never had any conversations about her, but I can guess where she is coming from when I read her book, The Whale, published by Gaze Books.Gaze Books' first publication was Blaise Larmee's

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-86048789023802338322010-09-13T17:05:00.000-04:002010-09-13T17:58:29.092-04:00

I went to the Small Press Expo, in Bethesda, for the first time this past Saturday, with my roommate Adam. Enough people seemed excited to hear my name after seeing it on the internet that I thought I should get back to blogging. The show is overwhelming, constant fluxes of people. There were moments when crowds would clear and I would see tables I'd completely missed, previously obscured by

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-41750531586181812112010-07-22T01:38:00.001-04:002010-07-22T02:31:52.062-04:00

I went to see Inception with two of my roommates. None of us thought it was very good as a movie. It seems like it would be a particularly next-level video game, and I imagine the people that would most enjoy it are people that are really into currently popular video games. This is the sort of nerd who would be very excited by the prospect of a follow-up to a Batman movie being a science-fiction

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-24082993886882652402010-06-11T22:40:00.001-04:002010-06-11T23:06:32.844-04:00

A proposed double-bill: Slava Tsukerman's Liquid Sky (starring Anne Carlisle) and Kathryn Bigelow's The Loveless (starring Willem Defoe), both from 1982. Liquid Sky, to me, is the cooler movie, in that I respond more to its sci-fi signifiers than The Loveless' rockabilly aesthetic, but both are essentially movies looking at subcultures, eroticizing them, and using fairly spare dialogue. Both are

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-5308644351607730372010-05-26T23:21:00.000-04:002010-06-11T23:42:22.852-04:00

I've been thinking about moving away from the current template of this blog, as a place for my attempts to write criticism, in favor of a series of Q+A formatted interviews. In my mind, transcribing conversations with cartoonist pals would seem the best compromise between my imagined readerships, one-half comics-interested folk and one-half people I've encountered in physical space aiming to keep

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-52139948888170460502010-05-05T00:18:00.000-04:002010-05-05T00:40:44.201-04:00

My roommate from 2004-2007, Alex Tripp, just finished up his grad school thesis animation. I could not be prouder. He is one of the people I feel most artistically simpatico with, one of the folks that I feel like I can consider a peer without flattering myself. I have referred to him multiple times as being my best friend. Sometimes I use these phrases not to refer to the quality of the

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-47901472978714306902010-03-19T14:10:00.000-04:002010-03-19T20:31:38.067-04:00

Blaise Larmee sent me a copy of his debut graphic novel, Young Lions, for review. There's an excerpt, taken from the opening pages, up on the Arthur blog, and what's there covers a decent amount of ground. The drawing is appealing, in a fake-CF style, while the story concerns itself with young people that consider themselves to be making art. There's little bits in that opening that suggest these

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-75501101415022666842010-03-15T16:06:00.000-04:002010-03-15T17:15:15.187-04:00

I finally got around to getting a copy of Picturebox's collection of Mat Brinkman's Multiforce strips. This comic is awesome, a masterpiece of a very particular type. I'm amazed by its ability to read like what it is: An early twentieth-century newspaper sunday strip, drawn and printed in the twenty-first century, after decades of creative movement. You read it like you read Krazy Kat or Little

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-39958309839274356062010-02-24T15:42:00.001-05:002010-02-25T13:45:42.809-05:00

I don't know how long you're going to be able to, but go here and vote for Neon Knome. Ben Jones' latest stab at TV-pilot format is another clear step up from a dude who's been at the top of his game, being ripped off by people several steps behind him, for a while. EDIT: The show lost to a bit of maybe-misogynist garbage, but you can still go to that link for the time being to view Neon Knome.In

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-69583735274766187952010-02-08T01:16:00.000-05:002010-02-08T01:54:02.603-05:00

The time has come for a brief survey of contemporary literature, the bit of it I can see, from my vantage point as one who does not read as much as he would like to but feels nonetheless aware. In 2010, the David Foster Wallace essay "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction" comes to its twenty-year anniversary. In that essay, Mark Leyner, hip at the time, comes under fire, and a future

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-21364382914389116012010-01-28T15:50:00.000-05:002010-01-28T16:15:13.275-05:00

JD Salinger is dead, and while I expect most news outlets to write headlines referring to him as just "Author of Catcher In The Rye," the briefest eulogy I would give him amounts to "May no one graffiti 'fuck you' on his tombstone."There's a certain self-conscious backlash around that book, one cited by too many folks that don't seem like big readers as a favorite. Yet that self-consciousness

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-17056103206337556152010-01-27T00:06:00.001-05:002010-02-10T02:54:42.611-05:00

Noel Freibert gave me a copy of his latest comic, "My Best Pet," and I asked him if he wanted me to review it. He was noncommittal, and I said that I can only write about things that haven't had much said about them. While I've only seen one review of the comic, that review set off a big back-and-forth between critic and artist, where Noel explicitly stated his aims. Luckily, there's some things

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-90559420036571944532010-01-11T23:18:00.000-05:002010-01-12T00:08:04.449-05:00

RIP Art Clokey, creator of Gumby.Today David Mazzuchelli's Asterios Polyp showed up at the Baltimore Public Library and I was able to read it. Normally I try to avoid writing about things other people have already discussed at length, and that book's been talked over by pretty much everyone except for the artist himself. It's incredible for its control over various drawing styles and color use.

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-72752000123526113582010-01-08T16:33:00.000-05:002010-01-08T16:37:51.261-05:00

I have largely disavowed the practice of personal writing on the internet. So it will have to suffice to say that I had a great 2009. Too much talk of it would seem like bragging, or name-dropping, or some sort of disagreeable practice. But I had a great year, despite the lack of much of the media consumption that drives both this blog and my own conception of my life. The last year was a good

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-44332453304920656982009-12-30T12:50:00.000-05:002009-12-30T14:19:36.547-05:00

The year is becoming unwound, and so it becomes incumbent to find a thread that went throughout the whole thing. Normally I try to couch such year-in-reviews in the context of pop culture released within the year itself, but this wasn't the best year for new work, at least of the sort I'm interested in. Most things I got excited about this year came from years prior, but the people who brought

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-63855995629844969282009-12-18T19:35:00.000-05:002010-01-28T14:08:39.591-05:00

I loved Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mister Fox. The move into animation is a great fit for someone with such art-director instincts. By choosing to animate, the whole "films about rich white kids" thing melts away, because that all arose out of a want to build lavish sets rich in detail. The symmetrical shots moves into diorama territory. The director's style meets the animation perfectly, and the

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-58158984399446384542009-12-08T00:20:00.000-05:002009-12-08T02:40:49.680-05:00

A few nights ago, while mildly drunk, I made a personal list of what I considered the best films of the decade. A list of top films seemed less daunting, somehow, than talking about the best music or comics of the decade. Films seem more singular to me, easier to consider as individual entities, seeing as how each film is a different combination of forces- screenplay, director, cinematography,

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-34657116009325835202009-11-21T13:22:00.000-05:002009-11-21T13:50:08.996-05:00

For all the talk about how "comics" is a misnomer, there's certain trends in humor that seem to find their first expression through the medium of combining words and images. Jules Feiffer's Village Voice strip, with its neurotic Jewish male dialogues, is an expression of worldview that, when viewed with Feiffer's Little Murders, becomes this connective tissue that leaks down into Larry David.

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-15133265559284407002009-11-02T00:42:00.000-05:002009-11-02T01:05:46.734-05:00

This interview of Peter Blegvad in the new issue of The Believer is phenomenal. Blegvad's work is fascinating: I'm more partial to the Leviathan comic than I am to the music of Slapp Happy but that both, and more, originate from the same man is mind-blowing. It's sort of astounding how much one can accomplish if one stays alive long enough and continues to work as an artist, especially if one

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-38729138066041914582009-10-15T14:02:00.000-04:002009-10-15T14:23:24.042-04:00

The Funkadelic album Cosmic Slop is pretty underrated. This is true partly because it's a Funkadelic album, and they're marginalized for all sorts of reasons, largely reducible to "too weird for their time." Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow is one of the all-time great album titles, and Maggot Brain gets some recognition. Cosmic Slop comes after those, as well as the fairly inconsistent

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-14076867412406808022009-10-01T20:30:00.000-04:002009-10-01T20:58:52.787-04:00

I saw a little news story: Less pharmaceuticals are coming out on the market, because during the testing process, it turns out the drugs can't beat the control group placebo. Placebos, essentially, have gotten more effective, as marketing has become so prevalent that people have more faith in the idea of drugs.Last night, I attended a lecture about radionics: Essentially a discredited form of

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-60095480512233180702009-09-27T14:51:00.000-04:002009-09-27T15:02:27.354-04:00

That Simpsons Treehouse of Horror comic (issue 15) edited by Sammy Harkham and featuring a great many Kramers Ergot contributors ended up living up to all expectations. It is sort of similar to Brendan McCarthy's issue of Solo, which is to say it's kind of as good as pamphlet-format comics can get, now that the bottom has fallen out of that format, and the only way they can come out is through

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-9485389323223463692009-09-21T00:36:00.000-04:002009-09-21T15:01:58.034-04:00

I'm in the middle of reading David Foster Wallace's Oblivion, the last book of fiction he completed before he killed himself, theoretically the work which came closest to his goals of creating sincere and moving literature. It was these stated goals that got me interested in reading his work, after his death, and my perception of them that has led me to be disappointed in what I'd read thus far.

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-61208601647641721702009-09-14T16:58:00.000-04:002009-09-14T17:42:40.693-04:00

After being disappointed in the TV miniseries The Corner, I held off on my plans to get into Homicide: Life On The Streets. Now, that The Wire is complete, and I live in Baltimore, and the public library seems to have some discs inconsistently in stock, I gave it a go. It has a distinct set of charms- so far unreliant on concepts of "grit," instead moving quickly from scene to scene, with

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-13214573130206473042009-08-19T17:36:00.000-04:002009-08-19T18:56:51.314-04:00

The Wednesday Comics newspaper-comic DC is putting out is not really a value in terms of quality, but it's valuable as a sort of equivalent to buying mainstream comics, in miniature. If you read mainstream comics like you read any other, as an aesthetic experience, for four bucks a week, you have a diverse sampling of approaches, sort of like if you were combing through a fifty-cent box and

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-74551569317781490352009-08-15T13:09:00.000-04:002009-08-15T13:21:38.927-04:00

As I was listening to the Need New Body record Where's Black Ben? just now, the thought occurred to me that it was what Baltimore music has collectively been going for without being aware of it. The trashy collage of the album art, the goofy sense of humor. All the things that the press talks about when talking about Baltimore music through the lens of Dan Deacon is here, in an unaffected way,

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-47287078986569191482009-08-13T23:00:00.001-04:002009-08-13T23:53:03.746-04:00

Oh, that's interesting: The 33rd issue of McSweeney's is set to be a newspaper- with journalism, fiction, and a comics section. Called "The San Francisco Panorama." Putting up a fight for the format. It's interesting in part because comics have fought the same battle in recent years, but now print is in decline so much that the rest will catch up. I wonder if they can price it cheaply enough for

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-80530725311456267082009-08-13T21:39:00.001-04:002009-08-13T22:05:57.154-04:00

Big Blood, a band I've talked up multiple times in the past, have made their entire catalog available online for free. The "Already Gone" albums are their latest as of this writing, and I think they're great. The "Sew Your Wild Days" volumes are also a good place to start. This has been a year, like the last few, where I've felt disappointed in most music released. Soon there will come the

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-6403819762448292982009-08-09T00:58:00.000-04:002009-08-09T01:57:23.811-04:00

Whenever I read the novels of Steve Erickson, I'm struck by a feeling of "guilty pleasure," thought to be outmoded by those with my general tastes. The books are acclaimed, blurbed by various writers held in high esteem, but there's still something embarrassing and corny about it. Luckily, the books are books, read intimately, by one person at a time, because if I were to read them with someone

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-58803699503174339282009-07-25T22:14:00.001-04:002009-07-25T23:03:44.990-04:00

I have been house-sitting at my mom's house in Pennsauken, New Jersey. I take the bus into Philadelphia, and on these trips I find suburban sprawl hard to navigate. Most of South Jersey is undergoing this trend of development based around "upscale" shopping centers- The shopping center and its attendant large parking lots are a large part of my personal history and what I take as the

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-88520627976879351052009-07-24T21:27:00.000-04:002009-07-24T21:44:38.924-04:00

I was talking to my brother yesterday, and he mentioned an article he'd read. I haven't seen said article, and so can't link to it, but here's the heads-up: Corporations are changing their logos, due to the recession, to all-lowercase, in order to appear "friendlier" to customers. He mentioned Wal-Mart, right now the only thing that occurs to me is Pepsi, which I'd previously singled out for a

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-32543382292322613732009-07-15T18:12:00.001-04:002009-07-15T18:46:08.494-04:00

WFMU's blog pointed out that today is the thirtieth anniversary of Jimmy Carter's "Crisis Of Confidence" speech. I link to it so people can read it, but I don't have much comment on it. I'm halfway through watching Robert Altman's Tanner '88, and thinking about the way politics have changed: Eight years of the worst president the country ever had makes a lot of things seem somewhere between being

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-27306394547805997962009-07-10T14:09:00.000-04:002009-07-10T14:32:57.408-04:00

I sort of freaked out over The Lexie Mountain Boys when I lived in Olympia: Playing songs over the radio, showing the MySpace page to travelling bands coming through town, recommending friends to listen to them. This was all based on the band as pure sound, despite them being, on a pretty large level, a performance-art project. Costumes play a part of it, but the main thing is presence. Since

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-70458434653315794542009-07-06T20:54:00.000-04:002009-07-10T14:01:31.995-04:00

Kazimir Strzepek's The Mourning Star 2 really works for me. It functions sort of like a 1980s black and white fantasy comic, but with the revelations of twenty years worth of craft development behind it. Rather than be published in serialized pamphlets, it comes out as a book, which gives the fight scenes room to breathe- a trick some people learned from manga, but here, the way that action plays

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-64036210263013545982009-06-26T19:09:00.000-04:002009-06-26T19:31:58.527-04:00

The new issue of Jordan Crane's comic book, Uptight 3, is not very good. One story, the first part of a serial called "Vicissitude," works out a new art style that stands as a development from stories in the last Uptight. In it, Crane's printer's training gets worked into black and white, with greytones. It looks really well-designed, and there's a break from the standard grid pacing I've seen in

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-63924818565422192372009-06-20T22:49:00.000-04:002009-06-20T23:13:13.689-04:00

I haven't seen much talk about this news of Sammy Harkham editing a Simpsons Treehouse Of Horror special- if Ben Parrish hadn't e-mailed it to me I wouldn't have really known about it- but I am really excited about it. A collaboration between Kevin Huizenga and Matthew Thurber would never seem like a good idea except in this specific context, where it shines brilliantly. I really love the fact

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-48455621331947897012009-06-04T14:01:00.000-04:002009-06-04T14:56:49.496-04:00

This weekend, in Baltimore, there was a festival of ten-minute plays. There were around twelve plays, around that length, for a bill of entertainment running around two hours. The work was, on the whole, pretty strong, with only one or two pieces that had one anticipating the end to their brief running time. A lot of people I don't associate with strong work really excelled, doing work that was

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-72122128929133221092009-05-30T01:38:00.000-04:002009-05-30T01:59:22.090-04:00

Oh, man is not made for the cognitive dissonance that comes about from the day I had. Whereas last year's new Pixar movie was attended, in my life, by listening to an interview with CF that left me feeling deeply inspired, today I watched Up and read Jon Ronson's The Men Who Stare At Goats- which goes back and forth between the sort-of-amusing and conspiracy theories that leave you feeling

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-70704029558072294772009-05-14T14:30:00.001-04:002009-05-14T15:11:56.549-04:00

I recently checked out Roberto Bolano's The Savage Detectives from the library. It has since been returned, with only its first section read, and I am left to wonder why that book found the praise it did. Certainly, some of the praise- the comparisons to Marquez and Borges- feels like it comes from a place of racist oversimplifying. The Marquez comparisons have more to do with the amount each

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-46048996315294661132009-04-27T22:53:00.001-04:002009-04-27T23:23:33.986-04:00

For the past several years I have been engaged with what would like to refer to itself as "the counterculture," loosely stated, a variety of people involved with "the arts" on a DIY basis. This group defines itself at least partly in its opposition to certain mainstream ideas, and places a great deal of its self-worth in its support of others in their community. A large part of this group sort of

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-36609927788977371292009-04-24T20:44:00.000-04:002009-04-24T20:48:24.836-04:00

Rest in peace, respect is due: to both Jack Cardiff and J.G. Ballard. The former, the cinematographer for Powell And Pressburger, whose technicolor Black Narcissus work is a real mindblower, and the latter, whose spirit combined with life experience to form a worldview I can't quite relate to but nonetheless evoked a specific something of the twentieth century.

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-24028128579298922262009-04-05T12:55:00.000-04:002009-04-05T13:30:46.388-04:00

If memory serves, this time last year I was hoping that Free Kitten's Inherit would sound like the Magik Markers album Boss. I think this hope was buoyed by them both coming out on Ecstatic Peace and having female singers. Now I am listening to the new Magik Markers record, Balf Quarry, on Drag City, and thinking it sounds like Free Kitten. This paragraph is inscrutable to all but a certain kind

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-62518601680255387412009-03-17T13:35:00.000-04:002009-03-17T13:38:56.921-04:00

Oh great news: Criterion is releasing Last Year At Marienbad on DVD this June. I wonder if they're utilizing the new prints that toured just recently? Anyway, this movie is amazing, far superior to Resnais' Hiroshima Mon Amour, and probably my favorite film of the French new wave. It's great that more people will be able to see it in a decent form. (It's also going to be on Blu-Ray disc, which no

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-44230211839862427692009-03-16T22:43:00.000-04:002009-03-16T23:30:04.582-04:00

There are certain signifiers that are everywhere these days, designated at this moment in time as arbiters of quality. By themselves, however, they're meaningless, and it seems as if in a few years time it will be these things that will again be rebelled against.In comedy, there is this certain presentational style, of young males with shaggy hair, that can be vaguely associated with indie rock,

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-25227033370200326772009-02-23T02:02:00.001-05:002009-02-23T02:35:51.420-05:00

Oh boy, a perusal of WFMU playlists indicates the availability of the Big Blood and The Bleedin' Hearts CD-R, teased a year ago by the song "Oh Country." This has a cover of Syd Barrett's Terrapin. What an exciting band. They constitute half of Fire On Fire, whose record The Orchard was released this past December through Young God Records. I believe it's only available through their website,

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-48853094595417617222009-02-16T17:18:00.000-05:002009-02-16T18:06:20.366-05:00

The new Animal Collective album, Merriweather Post Pavilion, is getting acclaim far and wide, at least in the music-criticism outlets that I've seen. Response to it has been more mixed in terms of people I talk to: Some might wish for a less-poppy record. I think the vocals are mixed too smoothly and are occasionally too high in the mix. But this complaint, as I voiced it, feels related to what

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-24002974638632941202009-02-04T08:36:00.001-05:002009-02-04T08:50:26.351-05:00

The most recent episode of The Simpsons was a Heavenly Creatures parody starring Lisa. This is weird, right? Not because it's an obscure thing to reference for a half-hour's time, although the highly-specific nature of how it went about it's parody highlighted that element: Remakes of particular shots, multiple references to Josh Groban in place of the film's Mario Lanza. That all felt bizarre

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-24410414639887551592009-01-31T19:50:00.000-05:002009-01-31T19:55:42.052-05:00

Oh, hey, my friend Griffin (who I met briefly in Olympia, then hung out with a lot more in Baltimore) got written up in Vice Magazine's blog. They kind of make him seem like a drug-addled asshole when he is one of the nicest guys ever. I think I am hosting/performing comedy at his birthday in March. He came to my first comedy thing and brought me some pizza and a sandwich because I had been

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-41909069309630579812009-01-25T15:27:00.000-05:002009-01-25T16:53:36.109-05:00

This feels related to the post about The Silver Jews not being a band anymore, even though a completely different set of factors contributed to its happening: Kevin Huizenga will no longer be putting out his comic "Or Else." This has more to do with the feasibility of the comics pamphlet in a graphic novel world, but that format gave Kevin the chance to do whatever he wanted. Which, in the cases

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-81018880368023450022009-01-23T21:47:00.000-05:002009-01-23T22:06:12.071-05:00

The Silver Jews are soon to no longer be a band. This is fine, of course: Their last three records weren't as good as the three that preceded them, David Berman's book of poetry was of a high enough caliber to convince me that pretty much anything else he does will be interesting. (He's now looking into screenwriting, although I've also heard rumors of a novel.)But, attached to this news, in his

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-4482868603973943452009-01-13T01:22:00.000-05:002009-01-13T01:29:30.568-05:00

This guy draws pretty cool.I just gave my second go at the comedy thing. Again it went well, and again the out-of-towners for whom this is their life went over really poorly in a way that made me doubt how much of my success was due to being funny and how much was due to having an audience of friends and sympathizers. I got more applause when taking to the stage than actual laughter for any

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-1929465181668643202009-01-04T00:41:00.000-05:002009-01-04T00:59:11.715-05:00

It is 2009, everybody, and while we all sit glowing in the monitor light of best-of-the-year lists, somewhere in the shadows lurks the idea of the best-of-the-decade list, and with it canon-building. Now is the time to revisit work from 2000 to 2002 to see how it has aged. I maintain my belief that this has been sort of an odd decade for records, with so many bands' central appeal being based on

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-36248685983929996452008-12-30T00:22:00.000-05:002008-12-30T01:12:21.624-05:00

I read, in an interview with Renee French (maybe this one with Tom Spurgeon? That's got other bits to recommend it) that she doesn't think of herself as good with comics pacing, and that's why her current approach does the thing a couple Chester Brown books do, of having only a couple panels to a page. But, looking at this Marbles In My Underpants collection of her early work, I find a couple

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-39553994973068225682008-12-15T18:34:00.000-05:002008-12-17T04:12:11.461-05:00

More best-of-2008 listmaking mania:Best comics:I really didn't read very many comics this year. I didn't read anything from Japan (besides Hanakuma's Tokyo Zombie which was mediocre) or Europe. There were a lot of comics I would have liked to read if money were no issue. The Rory Hayes collection, Where Demented Wented, looked particularly appealing: Outsider horror comics including a porn comic

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-74515692770768127982008-12-08T03:27:00.000-05:002008-12-08T03:30:45.322-05:00

Cool bands to see if they come to your town, whose split cassette I would've liked to buy if I had money on me:Skoal KodiakKnife WorldUnreleased song to find on Youtube and blow your mind:Ol' Dirty Bastard's version of Build Me Up Buttercup. Sure, it's excerpted for a Rhymefest song, but this has ODB rapping versesCool tape by a cartoonist that works like a comic:Anti-Matter Alma Mater by Matthew

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-30137153469929712682008-12-04T10:58:00.001-05:002008-12-04T11:20:04.814-05:00

I tracked down a copy of Powell And Pressburger's A Matter Of Life And Death. I love a handful of Michael Powell movies, and got really obsessed with seeing more of them earlier this year, and this was the one classic that was unavailable on DVD. Sammy Harkham loves it, and his post about it is fairly exciting. I am really grateful for that blog entry I linked to, because I feel like it gave me

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-3525109917621071462008-11-21T12:42:00.000-05:002008-11-21T12:54:18.743-05:00

My friend Amber Smith's work was shown as part of the Olympia Film Festival this year, as part of a program that someone reviewed on their blog. I assume it is our mutual friend Joel Brazzel who is made to look like an asshole in said review. I think that Amber's work is amazing. I brought it to the attention of curator Bridget Irish, and more recently showed the work that was shown at the

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-55782558037514676212008-11-20T12:49:00.000-05:002008-11-20T12:52:10.575-05:00

I've written about Dash Shaw's Bodyworld webcomic a few times by this point. But I would just like to link to this animation he did to promote it, now that a pretty big plot point has been revealed in the course of its serialization. Pantheon is putting it out as a book next year, but I would recommend reading it at his site. But that animation is worth noting as its own piece of work, for being

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-35430547619177126432008-11-17T19:24:00.000-05:002008-11-17T19:32:41.777-05:00

I loved Synecdoche, New York, but that's not really surprising by now. Every Charlie Kaufman-written movie (besides Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind) has been increasingly more elaborate and affecting than that which came before it, and this, for all its trickiness, ends up being pretty devastating. I have no insights to it that wouldn't be better off if you had them instead. Really great, very

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-2551959222932445222008-11-15T02:22:00.000-05:002008-11-15T02:53:58.333-05:00

It is late enough in the year for "best-of" lists to start coming into being. I only feel confident talking about records, thanks to leaks serving as an equalizer: There are any number of movies and comics that I have yet so see and judge.Also, I kind of think it wasn't that great of a year for music. This could just be because of the way the music press works. The three records I am going to say

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-78534999952902595202008-11-13T22:33:00.000-05:002008-11-13T23:12:37.351-05:00

My grandfather is dying. He has Parkinson's, and several moves have been made to accommodate him. For a while, he was the sort of old man who walked a great many places: Up to the gas station every day to buy a copy of the Philadelphia Inquirer, or to the library further down the street. Or to the lake for fishing. By the time I was in high school he didn't walk around so well, using a walker to

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-23624676042611281942008-11-10T03:18:00.000-05:002008-11-10T03:34:06.574-05:00

Lynda Barry's novel Cruddy is a fine piece of work, some of the same subject matter tread by Charles Burns' Black Hole pitched through a distinctive prose voice that reads like her drawings but used to describe a world darker than her drawings themselves could convey.Lynda went to the same college as Burns, as well as Matt Groening. Some apocryphal anecdotes have Gary Panter having gone to

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-65225690538486231162008-11-08T21:34:00.001-05:002008-11-08T21:43:41.351-05:00

The whole idea of an automakers bailout is straight garbage, especially if it comes without a requirement to lower auto-emissions. Obviously, job loss is damaging, but there are reasons why industries collapse in catastrophic times. I believe firmly in the idea that America needs a second New Deal, which means the actual creation of new jobs, to get people through these times: Put the

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-47536685339791643872008-11-07T17:04:00.000-05:002008-11-07T17:23:41.650-05:00

This interview with Scott Adsit went up at The AV Club last week, and made me interested in seeing more episodes of the Adult Swim show Moral Orel. This was a show I was excited about when it started, due to Dino Stamatopoulos' comedy-writing history. It ended up not being as good as I would want it to, and watching Adult Swim programming online was always sort of a dicey proposition with how

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com39tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-2602908302130113342008-11-05T02:22:00.000-05:002008-11-05T02:35:36.110-05:00

Tonight has been the opposite of four years ago. Then there was sadness, tonight was this sort of ecstatic joy the likes of which I've never known: Parading through Baltimore, sort of being in front of said parade due to my habit of running up and high-fiving any black people on the street. From the H+H warehouse space across the street from my house, to the Washington Monument, up Charles Street

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-1417082887133846072008-11-02T13:11:00.001-05:002008-11-02T13:36:23.399-05:00

Last night I made my stand-up comedy debut in this Baltimore rock club, The Hexagon. I went on first, because I was planning on leaving early to go see Skeletons play in another neighborhood. I stuck around because a few of my friends were also to be telling jokes, and then by that point the appeal of getting paid a few dollar induced me to stay on for longer still.Most of the comedians were

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-60739653164251200392008-10-24T19:25:00.000-04:002008-10-24T19:38:52.447-04:00

The new Marnie Stern album is getting more attention than the last one, which is probably for the best: That first record ruled, total audience-builder type stuff. I am getting a vague sense, maybe, from the way people are reacting- dudes with blogs, mostly- of this sort of "Oh, man, I love her" borderline uncritical appraisal. Not in a prurient way, more like the way that Margaret Cho and Ellen

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-85670953999511354842008-10-11T22:30:00.000-04:002008-10-11T22:56:03.882-04:00

For those who haven't heard it, I should point out that The New Bloods' The Secret Life album is pretty great, maybe the best debut album by a band this year. Live, some of the dynamics are lost and the songs start to blur into each other, but the record itself goes from strength to strength. When I saw them, a friend said "Yeah, I'm not into them- They're just ripping off The Raincoats."Later on

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-9742962711767337812008-10-10T03:17:00.000-04:002008-10-10T03:19:18.726-04:00

I did not go to Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland. I did, however, go to Atomic Books in Baltimore and pick up this comic called "Swell #1: Open Faced Sandwich," by Juliacks. Normally my comics posts are just me singing the praises of stuff Picturebox put out, but this will be a slight change from that.First off: Presentationally, this comic is sick as hell. It's 11 by 11, and the version I

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-2350291494614536482008-10-08T00:25:00.001-04:002008-10-08T00:44:42.884-04:00

I thought it was kind of odd when I heard that Brian Chippendale started a "Noise For Obama" website. I suppose that having gone to a liberal arts school in the Pacific Northwest, where the music community is fairly notoriously politically engaged, made me take certain people's political positions for granted. Now I live in Baltimore, am somewhat engaged in an arts/music scene, and haven't heard

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-73767105154438983682008-10-01T18:04:00.000-04:002008-10-01T18:20:08.258-04:00

Check it out: A negative review of me and a video I made! I would warn you about spoilers but to a certain extent the description of what happens is inaccurate. She also gets the title of the piece wrong. I am described as nerdy-looking, which is not inaccurate, but the reviewer doesn't make the connection that I am the person she is describing thusly. I am not going to respond to any of her

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-320077071284929442008-09-19T01:12:00.000-04:002008-09-19T01:36:00.783-04:00

I have spent the last three days living in Baltimore, Maryland. I've moved into a house where a few nice people live, and find myself immersed in their set of friends incidentally. They are all art/music people who you might have heard about from the internet or print publications if that is something you are invested in. I bought a cat from the pound.I also just received a press release for this

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-42720403447671280212008-09-08T02:43:00.000-04:002008-09-08T03:14:42.207-04:00

The latest figure to go from me not knowing who they are to hearing a bunch of things about them in a short period of time would be Tiffany Anders. She sings "Heartbeat" on Mike Watt's album Ball-Hog Or Tugboat, put out two records on Up, one of which was produced by PJ Harvey, and is the sister of director Allison Anders, who she now runs a festival of music films with. I share this with you in

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-66961502094856705572008-09-08T00:12:00.000-04:002008-09-08T00:45:25.346-04:00

I am leaving Olympia, Washington in three days. This is a short enough period of time that I can be relatively assured of the fact that every time I see someone, it will probably be the last time, and I can then tell them that this is then their last chance to either jump my bones or tell me that they hope my plane crashes. I have lived in Olympia for five years, which is long enough to predict

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-59786442544950804372008-09-02T01:07:00.000-04:002008-09-02T01:12:01.846-04:00

This new version of Firefox is bullshit. I am particularly mad at the way it organizes my browsing history, and then displays it in a pop-up menu rather than a sidebar. This is made worse by the way URLs are saved: These are things that I use instead of bookmarks, people, and when thinking "Okay maybe I'll add bookmarks" I end up dealing with another pop-up menu, as opposed to a sidebar and just

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-75622092446605272722008-08-30T18:12:00.000-04:002008-08-30T18:22:03.074-04:00

"Did you ever see The Holy Mountain on ice?"I'm not certain that is the lyric that opens the last track on the new Max Tundra record, Parallax Error Beheads You, but that's how I heard it, as I listened to it for the first time, thinking that if it isn't the best record of the year (which it might very well be) it is definitely the record that Alex Tripp and I would listen to three times a day,

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-23161727957543859182008-08-19T23:47:00.000-04:002008-08-20T00:15:23.599-04:00

In getting ready to move across the country to Baltimore, I've been packing up all of my books, and getting new ones to read from the library. One, Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine came recommended by a friend, who read it in a burst, feeling that her thoughts had been captured on paper. While I was reading it, I learned another friend of mine felt the same way about it. When I began reading it,

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-92189214222790328142008-08-19T07:28:00.000-04:002008-08-19T08:43:55.697-04:00

Let me explain the Silver Jews.Let me first begin by explaining why I feel the need to explain the Silver Jews. It's because of people like Matthew Perpetua, he of the Fluxblog mp3 blog, getting all bent out of shape when David Berman makes fun of Radiohead.I'm not going to attack Matthew's taste: There are at least three things we are both into way too much (Pavement, The Wu-Tang Clan, Grant

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-25325937028942305922008-08-04T07:04:00.000-04:002008-08-04T07:23:08.956-04:00

Pretty much every time I watch a Sergio Leone movie these days, my thoughts start off saying "Wow, this movie is awesome, and completely underrated, why don't people talk about this more?" They move on to "I just want to make movies for people's dads." By the end there has been enough things that didn't quite make sense that I just feel like they've gone on too long.When I say "these days," I'm

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-78178924733959097492008-07-22T00:58:00.000-04:002008-07-22T01:03:18.861-04:00

The new Harmony Korine movie, Mister Lonely, is deeply mediocre. I don't have nearly as much to say about it as I have to say about The Dark Knight. The performances are all pretty bad. Werner Herzog, so awesome in Julien Donkey-Boy, is pretty mediocre here. Despite it being maybe more narrative and straight-forward than his other films, the endings are even more abrupt and arbitrary. Individual

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-79182297280547627432008-07-19T23:20:00.001-04:002008-07-19T23:32:08.088-04:00

When watching The Dark Knight, I came pretty quickly to the conclusion that it's a better movie than Batman Begins. The question is how it compares to the 1989 Tim Burton Batman movie, with its completely different tone. I compared Batman Begins to the 1989 film when it came out, too. There, you're talking about two films in terms of their success to start a franchise. Here, you're talking about

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5974612.post-72467780117653975822008-07-16T14:33:00.000-04:002008-07-16T14:34:36.035-04:00

Gary Panter, interviewing Philip K. Dick shortly before VALIS came out.

Brianhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15903796919335979951noreply@blogger.com2