There's this new band called Au Revoir Simone, who I first heard on an mp3 from the Grizzly Bear blog. I liked the song, "Backyards Of Our Neighbors." Then Pitchfork linked to a music video for a song called "Fallen Snow." They are three women, with keyboards that sound like pianos and vocal harmonies. It's not overproduced. It's pretty music, really pleasant and calming, kind of like Beach House minus the organ drone and dynamics.

From the video it turns out they're pretty as their voices, which will probably lead to creepiness in the future from music message boards. Let me lead the charge, with something that I don't think is inappropriate. The songs sound like deep tissue massage, and they have these kind of release effects. Wink wink. But this is the music's power- blockages become undone and thoughts get free, it feels like drinking water. It gets me in the mood to write, it brings on some kind of clarity. Lavender Diamond does the same thing.

The power lies in the freshness, more so than in repeated listens, I think. I compare it to water and there's this never the same river twice quality to listening to things that are unexpected. It's important to note also that the Au Revoir Simone structures aren't so repetitive in terms of recognizable choruses. There's just melody. Lavender Diamond repeat and chant, which is its own power.

Right now I wish I had the whole album.

EDIT: Some of the other, poppier songs, lose the melancholy r in a way that is still pleasant but maybe off-putting as a general aesthetic.

I decided towards the end of last year that I should spend this school quarter making a little movie, a comedy. There was some conceptual framework, but mostly the idea was that it would be funny. We didn't have a plot. We had a meeting, came up with some jokes. Today we had another one, finalized a narrative. Anyway, it's filthy. It's not filth, it should be good but oh man we just got together and came up with things we thought were funny and they were mostly dirty. And maybe mildly retarded. You might see my junk. Get ready, it should be great.

It will be awhile before I write a list of my favorite movies of 2006. I don't see so many movies in a year, and mostly it feels like an even dumber enterprise than a list of albums- There's not as much emotional encoding, stuff doesn't strike me as strongly.

It will take me awhile to get through all the movies I heard were good. Tomorrow I'll be seeing INLAND EMPIRE.

But I just saw Idiocracy, now that it's on DVD. And holy shit that was funny. Not so well-made a movie, with the voiceover going over things that could probably be really well-executed, but it works really better as a satire than Borat did, and it works better as science-fiction than Children Of Men. These are specific criteria, those movies work better as movies. Idiocracy might be better than Office Space, if only on an idea level since it's not as likable. But I liked it a lot, I thought it did the whole smart/dumb comedy really well. I like movies, I haven't seen that many that came out this year.

I know it's better than For Your Consideration, though. I laughed out loud exactly once at that movie, and that laugh was not as sustained as the ones in Idiocracy.

These are just comedies, I haven't even seen Talladega Nights or Jackass Number Two. I don't really expect I'd like the latter, but you know. Saying. But yeah, good comedy in 2006. I also really liked the "Middle America" episode of Wonder Showzen, which falls along similar lines to a lot of this stuff. (Not like other episodes of Wonder Showzen weren't really good, but in terms of contempt for a large swath of America, that one fits the trend.)

I also saw Michael Showalter's The Baxter, from 2005, which has a likable cast and is mildly funny and I think succeeds at what it wants to be, and what it wants to be is something I like. Different from these other stuff for being gentle and a romantic comedy and things like that. It's kind of weird/interesting in its sincerity as opposed to the absurdism of Stella (which is actually a minor character's name in this movie). At the same time, there's still this level of self-awareness and ridiculousness, which is both subtle and played kind of straight, but still- Michael Showalter majored in semiotics and a lot of the comedy in something like Wet Hot American Summer comes just from the presence of cliches. So, it's a weird movie, but it works because of how likable the cast is, and their ability to play both angles, so it just becomes this thing that very much is what it is. Partly it's an exercise. Some scenes don't make sense. But essentially it comes down to being a romantic comedy, but cast with people that a certain type of people like and find relatable so it works for this audience which is not Nora Ephron. Anyway, if you think you'd like it, you probably will.

A brief bit of personal goings-on: My professors want me to either leave my program for an independent contract or in some way change my behavior, as they think me saying "Hey, I don't really think that what this is saying is all that interesting" after long periods made up of a whole lot of nothing is conducive to a positive learning environment. I maintain that this type of intimidating presentation of work is much more destructive, but clearly this is unbridgeable terrain. I don't know what I'll do, it was a weird conversation- these issues coming up now, two weeks in, rather than at my evaluation conference at the end of last quarter, and after I apparently did a good job facilitating seminar. I find it hard to process this conversation as taking place, but I'm sure as class becomes more awkward it will be more fully understood.

Also before I get to talking about music, I'll say I just did one of my Achewood-reading jags, which I hadn't read since mid-November. Since then it's been on fire, seemingly, totally hilarious. Start here, but open in a new window because I have opinions about music I want to regale you with.

I think that Panda Bear's Person Pitch record is going to be great. It's been coming out in drips and drabs, in the form of various singles on different labels, and what I've heard is quite good. I think I'll do the thing where I stop listening to these things as they leak and instead wait for the record's release, March 20th. I've heard enough of it to get a grasp for what it is, seemingly. It'll be the record to soundtrack my hair growing back and out, and winter turning to Spring and that then turning to Summer.

Seemingly different but in fact rather complementary is the new Boris record, Rainbow. Already out in Japan and coming out on Drag City in Spring. I only listened to Pink a little bit before deleting it from my computer. This past Christmas break, I downloaded the opening track, Farewell, off Pitchfork's top tracks list. That was my favorite track when I had the record, but it was just this drone piece, and when it ends on record it goes into crazy-rocking Japanese metal. (Japanese metal isn't like the Scandinavian crazy stuff, it's pretty likable. It's about as ridiculous as that movie Survive Style 5+, not ridiculous like blood sacrifices.) On its own it's unsatisfying. This is prettier, basically, not as loud. They're something of a drone band, but this is the drone taken away, and so this is a lot more dynamic than Pink. It's not free from rockers, but there's a lot of pretty stuff, and so those rockers stand out more, while still working as a record. It's more of a record and less just a general aesthetic.

Oh also, you might remember on my top 15 records of 2006 list that I didn't have a fifteen. Or that's how I remember it, I might be wrong. But I remember saying that if there was to be a next hip-hop record, it might be Spank Rock's YoYoYoYoYoYo, but I hadn't heard the whole thing. Now I have. I'd missed "Sweet Talk," which is the highlight.

I have been catching up on music, following all of the best-of lists calling things to my attention. I'd only heard a chunk of Girl Talk's Night Ripper, and made the declaration that Unstoppable was better. No one heard Unstoppable to know what the differences were. Basically, Unstoppable has songs, using the same samples throughout. It's a large number of samples, but they were these little self-contained units, and they were tweaked a bit more, pitchshifted to high pitches for comedic effect, and a lot of glitches added for more rhythms and individuality. Night Ripper is closer to a DJ set or a bunch of mashups. It still works well, it's still got some great moments, but the way those moments work is different.

I also hadn't heard Beach House's self-titled record, which is really nice. Two people, one male, one female, and there's an organ, and they make pretty droney dreamy pop songs. Basically, they are kind of similar to Brightblack Morning Light but better in every possible way. Including, probably, as people, because Brightblack Morning Light came off as really dumb hippies in that Arthur from a few months back.

That's the stuff that was really good. There's other things which maybe require a bit more of an investigation. (Although it turns out that Scott Walker's The Drift was about as boring as I thought it would be when I heard about in it January)

That story I posted on Christmas has been rewritten and is now essentially finished. But why I write this is to bring attention to Douglas Wolk, a music critic who had a show on WFMU, wrote a book on James Brown's Live At The Apollo, and did a Christmas show in 2001 featuring six hours of James Brown, who's also a comics critic who resolved to read a graphic novel a day in 2006. He didn't do it, but you know- I admire anyone with that level of dedication to more than one interest. I'm listening to his James Brown Christmas special now.

Menomena are the favorite band of someone who is smarter than be. I imagine them as being younger, too. Their new album, Friend And Foe, is better than their first record, I Am The Fun Blame Monster, even though the same issue afflicts it. All of the songs are huge. Not in terms of length, like that Joanna Newsom record, but in terms of density of movement, how much is happening at any given moment. A lot of the songs are strong enough to serve as openers. Every song is an album in miniature, possessed of tiny thrilling movements. Every sound is huge- The drums could break fingers. I hear that this album, when released, will have art by Craig Thompson, a lot of it in a little booklet. Holy shit these songs are ridiculous. The lyrics are accessible as anthems or anything that would be on a rock radio ballad, but they're delivered as something careening, not safe enough to ride in without smashing your head multiple times against a window.

Every song is a bomb going off on a city block. The album jumps over the city, from territory to territory, finding different spaces to eradicate, and every little bit of demolition seems different. It's all fucking crazy. It's all a bit too much. It's like how when I watched Children Of Men, I was hoping for Car by Built To Spill over the end-credits. But that movie's too prog for such things. (The soundtrack has King Crimson on it, as well as Radiohead, remixes of Aphex Twin, a muzak-y cover of Ruby Tuesday by The Rolling Stones, and classical soundtrack music.)

Children Of Men is a good movie. Arguably great. It's got the stuff of greatness in it. But there's also a whole hell of a lot of "Wait why is this happening?" that is never resolved. Weird holes in the center of a science-fiction movie. As an action movie, it's well-done and brutal, thrilling and unexpectedly moving when the tension lets up just because of how nice it is that the tension lets up. As a political movie, it's muddled because of that issue of "why are things happening?" It's political in general, addressing that things exist, but just giving you an apocalypse in response. Alfonso Cuaron also made Y Tu Mama Tambien, and that movie was similarly a little bit overrated, and weird in its presentation of politics as backdrop. People respond to the presence of the politics, and see their sympathies in a weird horror about other people's reactions to immigration. Dystopianism. This was the stuff that got to me too- The moment of tension relief comes when someone says "Ceasefire" and somehow that speaks to a brief moment off in the future, our real future, when such things are widespread. A moment in miniature that gets to that hope by its ability to create a small world so tense and reflective of our own if only vaguely.

It also makes me think of the Destroyer song off City Of Daughters "No Ceasefires (Crimes Against The State Of Our Love, Baby)" although for no real reason. But you know, that simplicity, that relief of tension. "Think globally, act nobley" is how that song starts and it's what Children Of Men does, and so kudos are given. But I just wish I knew why things were happening, the same way that I wish Menomena gave you the occasional foothold.

If I could blog by telepathy, you would've gotten a bunch of stuff yesterday, concerning my stepfather's nudity, and how My Name Is Earl annoys me for the same reasons Arrested Development did.

Anyway, I'll just say that I'm currently a little bummed about the cancellation of a Black Dice show in Philadelphia. And that John Darnielle is currently doing a thing which should make the Da Capo best music writing 2007 book, with his "Thirty Short Poems About My Favorite Black Metal Band." It's maybe the best stuff he's done since that Strokes piece. He's stopped writing the long pieces, mostly, which I find disappointing, but it's the cumulative weight of this new series of short pieces which has works to the same effect.

When I wrote my list of the best albums of 2006, I mentioned that there was a lot of stuff I hadn't heard. One that I listed was Juana Molina's Son. (Another that I listed was Earth's Hex, which came out in 2005, it turns out.) I bought that the other day. At the moment- It's pretty. It's interesting. It's overall pleasant but nothing heartstopping. There've been Notwist comparisons, but it's not as prone to anthems. The reason for my reservations might be the fact that the songs are in Spanish, and this puts a damper on singalongs. But it's also not really dynamic.

It's the type of thing I'd listen to a lot in mp3 form, I think, when it's nearing the end of the evening but there's a need for music. It's music for that mood, which is a tired one. I don't know if I'll select it in CD form to listen to in those moments, since usually, when I go to those, it is because I am reaching for a specific feeling, wanting to hear the songs that have been stuck in my head.

But the mood Juana Molina is for is a mood I am frequently in. I'm in it now, in New Jersey, 1:59 AM, and the only songs on this computer are things I've downloaded while I've been around here, with only mp3 blogs, and no file-sharing software to aid me.

A few days ago I cut my hair, all of it, the head stuff anyway. Not pubes. It got out of hand and I decided to just scorch the earth, because some people (women) had told me that the bald thing worked out well for me.

And I guess my head has grown, or maybe it's these glasses that are different from my old glasses although not so much that people can tell the difference.

Because hoo boy this doesn't look too good at all. I will wait for it to grow back, in this new year, and I resolve to learn a lesson, that a shaved head is a young man's game. (I got the idea from fictional characters that were the type that an angry young fellow would like. I might look like a monk now, but that's not where the impulse arose when I was in high school, and now there is a disconnect.)

It will grow back.

Spent last night running around with my brother keyless, and had to go back to his house with him because I didn't have a key. And we left early because he had been aching to fuck his ladyfriend. But I ran around spending money, bars with entry fees, with that feeling of restraint that comes from not really being in your element, when you are with someone who is in their element and probably judging your from your ability to roll with it.

So here is hoping that 2007 is spent in my element, that that is something I will be able I will able to break through to and then cultivate. That includes doing more writing, right? It does if I am at all the person I think of myself as being, which I kind of need to be, in order to ever be in my element.

The literal element I'm in would be oxygen, but I'm talking about figurative elements here people.

Link-blogging! http://www.familylosangeles.com/blog/2006/12/great-anti-semites.html

When the power went out, I was working on a story. This was the first time, at school. And as my made my way home, I thought about how what I wanted was to sit in the dark, with one other person, and tell them the story I was writing. I had plotted it all out in my head, but was having trouble putting it down into sentences when I was reminded of the inconsistency of technology. So oral tradition revival felt like something romantic in those moments.

The next day I'm talking about this to Gianna and she gets excited. And so we fake it, we turn off the lights and we all gather around and leave ourselves to channeling something.

It became a game of jam sessions, with Graham, Gianna, Sam Adams and I. But at the end I wanted to bring it back to what it was, with me just telling something solo. But the story I had plotted out in my head was told first, so I just went ahead and started improvising off the top of my head, as everybody lay down on the edge of sleep.

Then I thought the story turned out so well I thought I'd write it down as best I could recall. (I wanted tapes for transcript but none were available.) And I'd rewrite it where necessary, to fill in the gaps in my memory, but hopefully the charm of it persists. To me, I think it's very charming, a nice little bit of automatic writing that darts from point A to point B with each of those points being something that occurred to me, and that in their traversal maps out some kind of psychic territory. I think it shares thing in common with the stuff that I like, while being its own thing, which is really all I want out of my work.

But anyway, here's the second or third or fourth draft, probably not quite done. (The first draft is that which I spouted spontaneously, when I closed my eyes and saw arrows.) When it's done I think I'll submit it to the school literary magazine which I don't think is very good. For now it's here, for you to read, maybe to the tune of the Beck song off Mellow Gold with the lyric "The sales climbed high through the garbage pail sky, like a giant dildo crushing the sun." "Pay No Mind." That's just the tune I read it to on reread.

Anyway yeah okay so this story right here is copyright 2006 Brian Nicholson.

It's called "Sugar Suture."

The arrows sailed over the walls of the city, with some hitting billboard bullseyes and the rest gliding down into the populace. One plunged into my shoulderblade, leading blood to spurt and drip like twisting the cap off a shaken-up soda bottle. I needed medical attention, but leechings were costly, and I was uninsured. I also had suspicions that such practices were not all they were professed to be. But blood was leaking with such speed that I wouldn't be able to walk far, and I was closer to the hospital than anywhere else.

I walked into the emergency room and expressed my reservations in regard to the practice of leeching. The doctor told me there was a new treatment, that involved no leeches but produced comparable results. I consented to this, and the doctor then removed the arrow from my back and replaced it with a clear plastic hose. He stood in front of me and started to suck on the hose until blood rushed through, up towards his mouth. He then quickly removed his mouth and put his end of the hose in what he referred to as "a new kind of bag," which started to fill up with blood. I soon fell asleep.

When I had woken, my blood had completely vacated my body for a bag. It had become its own thing, something like a son, consisting of half of myself. He had taken half of my vocabulary. My blood told me that he had his own life to live. I needed something new to pump through my veins.

I left the hospital and went to the 7-11 next door. I walked up to the Slurpee machine, and placed the flared-out end of one of a brightly colored straw into my wound. I turned one of the bubbled lids upside down, and placed the top end of the straw at the lids smaller opening. I cupped the dome in my hand with the straw falling between my fingers, pulled the lever on the machine to the right and filled myself up with softly frozen cherry soda. I replaced my blood with something cooler. I didn't know what I would do about my bones, but my bones insisted they'd be fine.

When I went home to my wife she was bothered by my lack of passion. "What happened to you?" she asked and I explained. And then she said "What are we going to do about this?" and I told her I assumed that everything would go about as usual. "What about a child? I thought we were going to have children, and I'm not sure we can do that now that you're something that's human." I had forgotten all about words like child and children. My blood had taken them when he stole half of my language. So I just shrugged, because I had become something cool. As time went on and I cared less and less about her as I cared less and less about most things. She didn't have the same stuff running through her veins, and it became clear that I would have to leave and go on to other things. But she still needed something.

And so I went down to the pharmacy and bought myself one of those new kinds of bags, and I masturbated into it three times a day for two weeks. When my semen had accrued enough to take on a life of its own, I presented it to my wife and told her that was all she could have of me. And I left the two of them together and went on to pursue an art career.

Then one night at the end of a party that didn't turn out the way as planned I said aloud, "I don't know what I'm going to do about you, bones."

And my bones insisted that they were sticking with me. We were in this together, my bones and I, even though he was bothered by my always blaming everything on him and never acknowledging the closeness of our connection.

When the cold weather came, there was nothing left to keep me warm. The chills that came made me feel like I would shake my tendons loose and my bones would finally fall out, but they remained steadfast. I was hoping I could return to my blood and we could hold each other at night while we slept. But my blood had left the city, to go to war against our enemies. On the night of the winter solstice I received word he had been killed. When I learned this, I cried high fructose tears that stuck to my face. My bones insisted that this was not enough mourning.

I returned to my wife in the middle of the night and drank my semen from the bag. I hoped this would restore me to the person I once was, but it filled up all the wrong spaces.

I left the city with a white flag waving and asked the opposing army if they could help me find the spot where my blood had been spilled into the dirt. They showed me a small patch of land, and I asked if they would do me the favor of burying me alive, so that the dirt would fill my lungs and in this way my blood would be returned to me. They agreed to do this, but made me dig up my own grave. And when the hole was dug, someone pushed me over. I fell into the hole and felt the dirt fall as they shoveled it back on.

I laid down and died and didn't feel myself get any closer to what I once was. Everything gets diluted in the dirt, which outstrips me by a million to one. Now that everything has been eroded, only my bones persist.



--------

And Merry Christmas everybody.

And I realized that I was wrong about art, that that wasn't what got me through the year. Because this year was a whole lot better than last year, filled with actual exciting things, like travel and new experiences, and not just records. There was the Pacific Ocean, and California, and vagina. Democratic elections! Blackouts! I don't know whether rock shows count as art or actual life experience, but I guess in a lot of ways it's all a blur, but you know: Lightning Bolt, The Boredoms, and Hrvatski. Yo La Tengo and Why? Man Man, Akron/Family, Shellac, and Boris. Also others- USAISAMONSTER, Wooden Wand. Whatever, I talk about almost every show I go to on this blog. Read the archives. (This isn't addressed to friends of mine so much as it is addressed to me in the future.)

I wrote a top five comics of the year list for a message board, which I will now edit a bit to post here. For my own personal records. Not a top ten, because of the fact that I didn't read a lot of stuff I probably would've liked.

Number one comics of the year for me were Kevin Huizenga's. I'm kind of trying to write an articulate essay about why for another website, but basically- Dude is still young as a cartoonist, he's under thirty, and you can see him talking in interviews or his blog about how he wants to get better: Have characters that are singular aspects of his personality, rather than just an everyman character that's faintly autobiographical. Have his characters do things, rather than just think. So I like that he's a young dude who knows how to get better, and is making that clear, transparency in the artistic process. (In what's maybe his best comic so far, the 28th Street story, he has his character do stuff, and what he does is awesome.) But this year, his comics are all thinking, basically. But what he's thought about is how the world works and he did enough comics to talk about that and nail it from a bunch of different angles. All his comics came out with different titles. The Curses book, a collection of short stories that I think are all from 2002-2004, is awesome. That has 28th Street in it, which I hadn't read until this year. Or Else 4 is so weird and abstract, it comes off like a minicomic Koyanaqatski basically. I heard someone in the comic store talking about how they couldn't finish it, which is too bad because the ending is great, where the Earth collides into the moon. Ganges 1 is a lot more straightforward and readable and pretty cool in itself, dealing more with how people interact with each other rather than how nature and society interact. His pamphlet for the Comics College is probably more interesting than that Scott McCloud book about how to make comics that came out this year, that I didn't read. It's about making art, which none of the other comics explicitly discuss, but seems important. And yeah, he's just really great at comics as a vehicle for metaphor, so for something to be explicitly about that at certain points was really great. I'm especially fond of the "perspective exercise," addressed towards those who want to be cartoonists, where the items asked to put in perspective are a masterpiece, money, sweat, and some other things. It seems hacky when I type it but in context it's great. I didn't read his minicomic of sketches he drew in church, but I like that it exists as a further "here's my artistic process." That guy rules.

Number two comic would be the Brendan McCarthy Solo issue, which got me to buy some stuff from the eighties. It's about as weird that Huizenga is under thirty as the thought that I think McCarthy's over fifty. He hasn't done comics for over ten years, he's been doing concept art for movies I would never watch, like the Lost In Space remake. Which is hilariously hacky for someone who is so plainly not a hack, who has such a weird vision and ambition. God, this comic was so pretty. I don't even know how to talk about something like this, besides wishing there was more of it. What unites my top three, I realize, is this combination of transparency in the artistic process, McCarthy wears his influences on his sleeve. And what's important is that I'm unfamiliar with the influences, but the transparency actually teaches me stuff. Brendan McCarthy made me look into Mervyn Peake, who in the early part of the twentieth century wrote nonsense poetry and did painting. Kevin Huizenga goes on about birds and folk tales, and Ganges had this one quote from a geologist that has haunted me.

Number three would be Casanova. What that teaches me is the same stuff as Tarantino movies, basically, that knowledge of a breadth of cheap exploitation stuff which I know enough about to like but not enough to outnerd anyone. It's a spy comic, clearly in debt to Danger: Diabolik, but also referencing a bunch of stuff I don't know about at all. It's in one color, like old Barbarella comics, which was not a fact that I knew about said comics- I know Jane Fonda was in a movie I didn't see, but which this comic then informs me Paco Rabanne did costume design for. But yeah, it's a spy comic, and a fast-moving one, and I'm sure it has plot holes, just because of the speed it moves. But yeah, really, the only monthly comic that grabbed me, because it was the only one where I never knew where it was going, because that's how spy stuff operates. That weird stream-of-consciousness plotting. The writer of this also read that Esquire article George Saunders wrote about the kid that was meditating for days straight. The one I only heard about, but don't buy magazines so I was left in the dark. Yeah, breadth. It taught me things I didn't know.

Then there's Scott Pilgrim, where Bryan O'Malley talks about the shit I know, essentially, but he knows more. There's instinct where I have to think about things. Dan Nadel, dude that runs Picturebox, referred to it as "cute teenager stuff that I guess cute teenagers like" which, um, guilty, I guess. I thought it was really likable. It talked about stuff I understood, but you know, it was funny. And in such a good format. Every comic listed has been in a different format, this was released straight to 200-plus page chunks of stuff I hadn't read, digest size, readable at a fast pace but with enough happening to give it some heft, and had things happen for long enough that I was able to get highs of joy from it. Closer to a movie or a record in how it doesn't give you stuff to linger on, and is fairly immersive. It's the comic that feels closest to the feeling of watching a movie, but said movie is so pure so as to be someone else's lucid dreams. It's all in the confidence, and there's so much of it that when I first read it I thought it was the most confident comic I'd ever read. All of the drawings seem so organic and easy and FAST that they come off like living doodles, all of the plotting just seems intuitive. Even the meta stuff doesn't seem self-aware in the bad way, so much as a thing that happens in a stream of consciousness. Oh, and this and Casanova both had New Pornographers references, fun fact. But the difference being that in that book, it was a comic being written while listening to the New Pornographers, and in this, there's just a moment where, in your head, a New Pornographers song starts playing, if you know it.

Tales Designed To Thrizzle is funnier than any other comic. Funnier even than that issue of Dork which was such a bargain. This is weirder, more charming, whereas that was darker and crasser. This is closer to the type of comedy I like, even though I thought that comic was funny. If John Hodgman drew this would pretty much be what he came up with.

Okay so now an albums list. I decided awhile ago that Paper Rad's Trash Talking was my album of the year. It's a DVD, but it's out on Load Records, and it functions closer to a record than a movie in terms of its non-narrative structure.

So, okay, here's a list I don't feel too strongly about. (I wish I'd heard Scott Walker, Juana Molina, The Goslings, Herbert, OOIOO, etc. Justin Timberlake, Earth)
2. Matmos- The Rose Has Teeth In The Mouth Of A Beast
3. Liars- Drum's Not Dead
4. Yo La Tengo- I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass
5. Man Man- Six Demon Bag
6. Sunset Rubdown- Shut Up I Am Dreaming
7. Ghostface Killah- Fishscale
8. Califone- Roots And Crowns
9. Camera Obscura- Let's Get Out Of The Country
10. Wooden Wand And The Enablers -Spring Tour CD-R
11. Swan Lake- Beast Moans
12. J Dilla- Donuts
13. Islands- Return To The Sea
14. Nina Nastasia- On Leaving
15 might be Beirut. Spank Rock would be the rap album to come up if another were to come up. Wooden Wand's Gipsy Freedom is also a contender for the end but you know, the list is falling apart. I'll also admit that I don't even quite know what to think about that Liars album, I downloaded a rip that annoyed me with its low quality in a way that fucked me up and I fell asleep on first listen, only to be woken up by that amazing final track. Now that it's on vinyl at the house it's good, but still, so many of my early listens were tainted it's hard to judge. I don't like Joanna Newsom's voice but am half-tempted to pick up a copy of Ys for the sake of the benefit of the doubt. But that cover is pretty ridiculous. Swan Lake has Shary Boyle art! God, furthering the argument that that hippy-lady just has kind of bad aesthetics.

It's so late. Anyway, here's hoping I can make it up to Providence for that Wunderground show, and be back in Philly to see Black Dice/Excepter on January fifth, a show I learned about last night! (I made a Black Dice shirt and now they'll be able to see it!) And I think I'll spend New Year's Eve at the Khyber, seeing Paper Napkin, who I met last new year's eve, at another bar I was able to sneak into, but I wouldn't have had such luck at the Khyber. I turned twenty-one this year. Woop woop. But yes, bigger and brighter things. Next year in Jerusalem. (But I'll probably write more here between now and then.)

So I've written on this blog about listening to the One Kiss Can Lead To Another box set, but I've also talked about it in real life. "I've been listening to a lot of girl group pop," I say to my friend Graham, and he responds with "You mean like the Pipettes?" and I think I then got one of those faces that old music snobs get when you have a conversation like that one.

But those old sixties songs are on my computer, and that's in Washington. I'm doing the late-night music blogging on my mom's computer, without mp3s. But there's YouTube, and Pitchfork linked to songs by The Pipettes when running down the best tracks of the year. I'd heard them before, but I heard them again today. And the reaction is still the same, I guess, that face. The face that says "I know what you're talking about but no that's not what I'm talking about."

Part of the appeal of the box set of singles is how it brings out the diversity in all the different bands, all the weird angles. So a band that's going after specifically the Shangri-Las misses a lot- The weird reverbed guitar solos, the dramatic (as in theater) choruses.

And that girl group box set has solo performers on it as well.

So that leads to something I wanted to talk about, an amazing Olympia moment. At a house party, bidding farewell to the aforementioned Graham, (I think this is actually where we had that conversation) there is a dance party, and I am dancing supposedly amazingly, supposedly violently. The type of dancing you do when you mostly dance at rock shows but then some girl says that she heard you are a good dancer and you should dance with her if that is the case. (Sam Adams, who said I redeemed that party, said that I did everything short of punch this girl in the face, so violent was my dancing.) But I am not the star of this anecdote I wish to tell. The star is The Blow, who wasn't even there, except in song. But when the Poor Aim EP started to play and all the girls that were dancing started to sing along to various lyrics, for emphasis, I don't know, it was something special. The point of pop music as I understand it came through so fucking strong, in that whole danceable + relatable sentiment intersection. When I was walking home I thought about how the difference between good song lyrics and good prose is that song lyrics are all about understanding the world, sung from a position of authority that comes when you're creating the sonic world, whereas prose is all about confrontation with the actual world outside the page. But that was just theory that fact doesn't always bear out. What's important is the dancefloor singalong moment. The EP pretty much played out in its entirety, and I think every song had someone accompanying a line or two. (The Pitchfork Top 100 tracks of the year list is right on when talking about Parentheses, right down to the Me And You And Everyone We Know comparison, and the name of that movie and what it evokes is what makes the sheer being in public with friends group singalong so much a perfect moment.)

The Blow is on the modern girl group pop compilation, the one that exists in my mind. So is Saturday Looks Good To Me. So is Camera Obscura.

Now I want to talk about Camera Obscura, whose last record I don't think I heard save a track or two. I know the record was lent to me and I pretty much rejected it on Belle And Sebastian grounds. I heard the opening track of the new record on The Best Show On WFMU and downloaded the whole thing. Alex and I were bitter at the Pitchfork review, with its talk of it distinguishing itself the old-fashioned way, through melody and lyrics, because it came shortly after the not-as-enthusiastic-as-we-thought-it-should've-been Matmos review. But then that song (Lloyd, I'm Ready To Be Heartbroken) came across the speakers, and even Alex was interested. He's not as into the rest of the record as I am, we haven't talked about it, but yeah, I think it's great. I put music from this year on shuffle and a song came on I didn't recognize but thought was so great I checked to see what it was, and it was Camera Obscura. The person who lent me the last record doesn't like it so much, nor does her boyfriend who bought her the record. I was talking to him, and he said it sounded like stadium rock. I said that if stadium rock was fronted by smallish twee girls I would like it way more, and so that's the appeal. It's really great. I haven't formulated an albums of the year list but that record- It's got the standout singles but what's odd is how the rest has stuck with me, the way that I think of the song "Come Back Margaret" at odd intervals- Sometimes because I'm looking at a girl in class named Margaret and I am simple but also sometimes when I am watching movies and that song is just a catchy song, for how low-key it is.

Camera Obscura is just on the whole more girl-group than the aforementioned Pipettes, which I guess is just me saying they're better, or that they're actually good. I should maybe go forward with a back catalog investigation but so far that hasn't shown any rewards.

I'm also tempted to talk about Lavender Diamond here although they're very different. The only association that there really is is that, for my next installation, where I make a movie, I want to use the Dawn song "I'm Afraid They're All Talking About Me" (which is amazing, and which ran through my head when I was in a vietnamese restaurant and thinking that these teenage girls were giggling about the way I was eating chicken) as some kind of Quentin Tarantino-esque pop song coup and I also want the band Lavender Diamond to play in the installation, because I think they would, but I don't know what song I'd use for unexpected purposes. I like that band though. The cartoonist Ron Rege plays drums, and Jeff Rosenberg (from Young People, and also the guy from Pink And Brown I didn't meet) plays guitar. Becky Stark seems like very good people, judging from the creation of a thing called Comedians For World Peace and being inspired while in Providence during the Fort Thunder days. Also the song "You Broke My Heart" is pretty much the jam, and the probable pick were it not for my belief that something that plainly expressive would overwhelm any scene in any movie. It's not the same genre as what I'm ostensibly discussing.

I could go on about that though- the most recent Saturday Looks Good To Me mixtape appearance was the song "Lift Me Up" off Sound On Sound volume 3, which starts off with these HUGE bass notes and goes odd places and is just generally very girl-groupish in a way that works. So's Yo La Tengo's Beanbag Chair, despite the male vocal. I guess the issue isn't the idea of citing a modern band so much as the issue is citing any single band when confronted with a genre, as the idea of saying a genre is that it should bring to mind a bunch of bands, and that saying "You mean like The Pipettes, and Saturday Looks Good To Me?" would be a much more acceptable answer.

I imagine there will be a post about comics that will be pretty lucid in between now and the time where I write a year-in-review. I'll talk about Kevin Huizenga's output for the year. You know, this kind of shorthand exercise where I talk about art so when I talk about the year, of which art was a huge part, you'll know what I'm talking about.

So if I am able to control my mannerisms I want to start saying "you're RA-cist" to the tune of "By Mennen!" Stolen from Tom Scharpling.

But it turns out I cannot control my mannerisms, which is why a dude I went to high school with was able to identify in a Salt Lake City airport. What was I doing? I was standing, leaning against a wall kind of, looking down towards my feet and maybe in a weird way but yeah, I talked to John Knox. He, who had been able to change his mannerisms: Previously known as Squeaks, because his voice squeaked oddly, in high school. He saw a speech therapist and found out that was not physiological, but a psychological block. So I wouldn't have been able to work it out from that, previously his most identifiable trait. Also his skin cleared up and adam's apple receded to a normal level. But yeah. I also ran into a girl who left Evergreen after two years at the Seattle airport. (This all came because I missed my scheduled flight to a transfer point in Cincinatti.)

When I talked to them I had good stories. Not all of which I've blogged.

The power went out in Olympia before I left, plunging everything except for downtown into postapocalyptic zombie darkness. Leaving and going to downtown felt like some kind of caveman ritual when the sun went down, gathering around the fire for warmth, only the fire was a bar or someone's studio apartment.

An end of the year post is forthcoming, in a more introspective, list-making, nerdier, mood. Right now I'm in the post-party-people afterglow, from end of quarter dancing at people's houses and a whole lot of running around.

The new idea inspired by stuff kind of alluded to in the last post is a radio show that would just go back and forth between two different genres every week. Girl group pop and coke rap, old folk/country and noise rock, free jazz and early electronic music, no wave and disco, outsider music and greatest hits, video game music and metal. The idea being that genre format radio just strips music of its individuality and that by juxtaposing it with an imagined opposite it brings out the strengths in both and destroys false binaries. Then there'd be me talking about maybe esoteric subjects throughout, but in a humorous manner. Maybe I could even do something not unlike WFMU's Aircheck where I would juxtapose insane political opinions from both the right and the left. (Since most political opinions from the left aren't actually that insane, it would probably just be hippy blather instead.)

I am going to blog about the new Clipse album because that is what white people do with this type of rap in the year 2006.

What the fuck Sam Hockley-Smith, like I get that the beats are good in theory, like that Momma I'm So Sorry song, that's a beat I would like for a shorter period of time than four minutes.

Anyway okay remember when I was talking about Cadence Weapon and I was saying that the punchlines are good but the stuff that's chosen to be repeated as hooks isn't exactly well-chosen? The shit that gets repeated on this album is stuff like, on that Momma I'm So Sorry song highlighted earlier, "I'm so obnoxious," which, for those who haven't heard it, is pronounced "ob-nok-SHISSS" which is so goddamn obnoxious. Is that how the lyrics are smart? In that meta way? Like is the meaning of the word "Trill" some kind of sniglet about words that don't mean anything, and on a mixtape somewhere they defined through some kind of anacronym?

Not that it's all bad. "I love you like I love my dick size," that's a good line. Oh wait, that was Method Man. Right before I listened to the Clipse I was listening to Only Built For Cuban Linx cut up with selections from that Rhino girl group box set. I guess that just comparing all rap to the Wu-Tang Clan isn't exactly a good critical standard, especially since my response pretty much always comes down to "This isn't as good as the Wu-Tang Clan."

So how about food? My roommate compared the girl group stuff to candy which made me start comparing music to foods- indie rock is quesadillas, tacos, and other easily wielded, relatively light, mexican foods (not burritos, they spill). Anyway southern rap is either bacon or like the deep-fried Oreos and Snickers bars you can eat in Atlantic City. When dude is saying "Wamp Wamp" I am saying "oh fuck, my arteries!"

Alright maybe I am missing the good lines, it's totally possible. I just realized that I was so distracted by dude's extended S'es and the nonsequitur "Miami Vice!" that I missed the line about "My only accomplice my conscience" that I saw somewhere on the internet and I was like "that's an okay line."

I think I stated in an earlier post that Craig Finn gives me the whole "music where the lyrics say so many references" thing that I like in rap, which probably makes this shit suspect. (Although it seemingly doesn't make that dude Tom Breihan suspect, even though IT REALLY FUCKING SHOULD) (Again, new record, not that good, but I found a gem of a lyric amongst the cast-off tracks. "She said she was coming but she mostly made hard fast noises. It sort of sounded like The Locust," but maybe that's not funny if you're not a huge nerd.)

And wait what the fuck is with this stuff about Jews? I just heard something about "This Pyrex is Jewish" which - okay I rewinded, that makes sense. Jews love money, got it. Sorry I doubted you, Clipse. I thought you were just spouting nonsense but I was wrong. This is a good beat, doing that whole fake Indian bit that was Timbaland's shit for a while (By the way, Jazz: Indian food.)

Oh iTunes alphabet- It turns out that The Coachwhips is what I want to hear when The Clipse is done playing. But only one, oh iTunes, why'd you have to keep going, fuck.

Oh shit it just became clear to you the reader that I haven't heard all of this- Just the first few tracks and a few days ago I heard that Trill song. I thought I'd start writing and do it real-time style but the downloads stalled.

I will say this though, holy shit I wish these beats went to Ol' Dirty Bastard, because this record is better than that also delayed all the goddamn time A Son Unique record which blows.

But I guess that mostly yes what I want rap is highly specific, which is probably symptomatic of it just not being my shit very much.

This Thanksgiving was spent all by my lonesome, with Alex gone to Portland and the buses having stopped running so I couldn't go to the little gathering I was invited to. I baked an apple pie with a lattice top, a turkey lasagna, and made some mashed potatoes. All good! The turkey lasagna was a weird compromise based on the idea that my mom would make stuffed shells at family holiday dinners for my vegetarian brother, liking turkey but having cooked a turkey breast like two weeks ago, and having lasagna noodles around for a while. The lattice top was an attempt to try something new that would be visually impressive when I went to someone else's gathering, but then that didn't happen and yeah a lattice top is just not as delicious as the crumb topping.

But on Tuesday I grabbed some movies from the library. I've watched two of those. One was the Philip Kaufman adaptation of The Unbearable Lightness Of Being, which I got with pretty much no expectations- I think I wrote earlier about how the book wasn't very good, (with the exception of the one line that was transformed into the name of last year's Shining album) and thought that maybe the movie would bypass some of my problems, with the addition of nudity! It's not a good movie. Leaving aside the source material: The cinematography is pretty decent. Daniel Day-Lewis looks like a jackass throughout, in that he seems like a late-eighties idea of what a man who can have sex with whoever would look like- Someone I'd like to punch in the face! And do to the aging of that type of eighties idea, it actually is almost kitschy, not a monster at all. Juliette Binoche is alright, charming in some kind of twee way.

But tonight I watched Black Narcissus, the Powell And Pressburger film from right before The Red Shoes, which I haven't seen. I really liked the solo Michael Powell film, Peeping Tom, and that one made me reconsider my preconceptions about them as being like Merchant-Ivory type boredom peddlers. Now I'm watching the documentary on the cinematography, which is fucking great, especially for technicolor technology, which, as the documentary explains, is fucking crazy. As for the plot- It's easy to get characters confused, what with most of them being identically dressed nuns, and with that so goes thematic conflicts. Two notes: one being that Pink Narcissus is a gay porn film made by a guy there's a song about on the new Matmos, and the other being that there's an Indian actress in the film whose real name is Jean Simmons, which is funny to me. It's a good movie. The next Powell/Pressburger movie I see will probably be The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp, which Patton Oswalt named as one of his three favorite movies- unranked, just one of those "oh I can't just pick one" moments.

The third movie, which I haven't watched yet, is Jean Cocteau's Testament Of Orpheus.

My dad was in court yesterday, and he's not going to prison. He's had his license taken away, but he still has his car, and is still driving it.

According to him, his lawyer pulled something out of his ass that seemed like it could set a legal precedent. State vs. Nicholson and a ruling in favor of drunk drivers. Yes, the family name will live on! Happy Thanksgiving!

When talking, there were hilarious parallels in our lives that I don't think he noticed. He, having moved out of his parent's house finally, sleeps on a mattress that lies on the floor. His apartment doesn't have enough natural light and so induces depression. And he doesn't have a driver's license. Funny stuff!

The conversation ended with an acknowledgement that we don't have a very good relationship, and him wishing to fix that by communicating more. Who knows how that will turn out?

Parent-child relations are so weird at this age, and probably from now on. I guess it's based around being very different people, but having been around the other person so much that you know their reasons for being the way they are and can maybe relate to them so you like/love them based on that knowledge, although the knowledge of certain details are still completely disgusting?

In other news, I'm doing animation for this art installation. I keep on making decisions to do really ambitious experimental things. Here's hoping it's a good habit. The latest idea I've had, for a possible Senior Thesis, would be to do a film that's basically structured like Koyanasqatski (sic) or something, but filled with talking, and about human interactions rather than the environment and creation myths. Until then it's experiments to get to that point, and when that point is reached I'm sure my brain will have moved on to something else entirely. When I say experiments I don't mean it in the arty sense, I mean the scientific sense. But even then, like a child's sense of science experiments, trying to replicate things I've seen but haven't done and use to my own ends etc. Like for this animation, the experiment is hand-drawn perspective shifts of a fairly large scale, the type of thing which is probably mostly seen in computer animated stuff, but sloppy and about a stick figure with swords jumping over an overweight man impaled with missles, and then lighting those missles on fire because his swords are on fire.

I'm working hard right now, feeling like I'm building something. I'm turning a shirt that's kind of shitty into something awesome, beginning with sewing Black Dice in yarn onto the front in a near-replication of the Creature Comforts sleeve. I need to make it longer and give it a hood and maybe a fleece lining.

I guess it might look like shallow frivolity. But it feels like building something just the opposite.

The other day I learned that another friend from Evergreen was pregnant and was amazed that we still haven't yet improved the world to the point where such a thing seems like a good idea. Except for the fact that doing such a thing, if you're the right person, is just the type of gesture that leads to that type of thing. I still think the same thesis of a short story I wrote a couple years ago, that art on a grand scale could save people on a small scale.

There are times when I think it might be for the best that women don't find me attractive. Like when a girl plunges her hand through a window for catharsis over sexual frustration and depression and ends up cutting a vein and bleeding all over a party, with the object of desire (who is mostly uninterested due to being involved in a relationship with someone who is not fucking crazy) being the only person able to talk said person (who is drunk) into going to a hospital.

I went to a party. I walked home. It was far from here. But a good party by I think any standard.

I wore a Black Dice shirt I made that day, that almost replicates some writing on the Creature Comforts sleeve.

I said a funny joke about having the charisma of a thousand Jay Lenos and ate some sort of spicy shrimp stew. Also there were beers, friends and enemies, and a shitton of strangers. Those strangers seemed mostly uninteresting.

I thought I would have more reportage, but what is there to say, besides an exasperated "Women!"

I fall asleep in class quite a bit, possibly to the point of coming off narcoleptic. It's early in the morning, rarely engaging- Things happen.

Also I am unhealthy. And I fall asleep during other things, because of the sleep schedule being not-so-hot.

So it's 3:38 now, and I'm not tired.

I napped earlier, and when I went to bed two hours ago I started to think about my plans to make myself a Black Dice shirt. Plans that I really would like to follow through on.

Today, I was told by a partner in this art project that she doesn't get mad at most people- Only me, because of the confrontational way of speaking which I basically attribute to the East coast. Rubs her the wrong way. And this is someone I like, obviously. Why is that obvious? Because it's someone I talk to like a normal person, which is to say that there are a lot of jokes and whatnot.

Alex ordered a copy of the Brian Chippendale book, Ninja. This was a few weeks ago, when it became available for preorder from Picturebox. I'm anxious for it to arrive. A lot of the Fort Thunder comics don't really grab me- There's a reason I didn't buy Teratoid Heights when it was in print- but I like the posters a lot, and the stuff I've seen from this (Stuff on the Gallery Agniel website) looks fairly advanced, actually possessing emotion rather than the Maggots era stuff I've seen. I found out before attempting sleep today that the Highwater Books site has online strips I'd never seen by the likes of Chris Forgues (CF) and Ben Jones, and I kind of like those guys' work more than the stuff more directly borne out of Fort Thunder. Most of the Highwater site is no longer online, due to the company shutting down. The stuff that persists does so mostly at random.

While talking comics: Here's one of the few pre-Roast Beef and Ray Achewood comics I've read that I think works.

Kids In The Hall Season Two Disc Two arrived from Netflix, and so Alex got to see the Daddy Drank sketch which is never far from my mind.