Monthly Archives: April 2006

Dept. of Rip Van Winkliness


Despite the obvious thrill I get from new things, I also love discovering things late. It guarantees non-currency—all the copycat hype has subsided, and there’s just you and the thing, meeting in the shadows like the Lady and the Tramp, sharing a solitary spaghetti after the world has moved on. This is happening to me with Eugene Mirman, who’s hardly old news, but is new news to me, and I’m drunk on the comedy, the voice, the Emo Phillips admiration (“I was playing tennis, and this girl said to me, she said Emo, wanna double up?”), the Christian anti-gay-marriage phone-company calls (“I’m just more worried that a sandwich would marry a bear”).

From a 2001 (see what I mean?) interview with Chunklet; link mine:

Besides Eugene Mirman, what’s the best thing to come out of Russia?

I’ll tell you what it’s not: communism. That’s a bullshit system of government. I don’t know. Probably caviar, smoked fish. Depressing literature? Pushkin? Daniel Kharms. He’s an absurdist author from the ‘20s and ‘30s. Mostly it’s a kind of attitude. I find that there are three kinds of Russian people. Some who will be like, “The world is cold, wet misery.” And others who are more like, “The world is cold, wet misery, who wants to go see a movie?” And there are those who are simply somewhat upbeat, “Let’s have some chicken and wine!” I’m somewhere between the last two. The best exported thing was an optimistic outlook on dreary things. I’m slowly recovering from this election, while my American counterparts are still throwing up in the streets.

My tardiness aside, Mirman is, of course, more famous than ever. Check the site for his tour schedule and his regular Wednesday-night gig at Cinema Classics (11th between 1st and 2nd). I wonder where he’s from in Russia? I didn’t see any mention of a town.

Smile, Smile, Smile

A blogger’s report from the recent “Poetry in Wartime” reading in the New Yorker Nights series:

What is your reaction to how ineffective poetry has been in the prevention of war? I ask:

Katha Pollitt says, “It’s not just poetry, it’s all art. Let’s hope it’s not a biological problem.”

C.K. Williams says, “Don’t think about it too much, or you’ll go crazy.”

Robert Pinsky, behind the table at the book signing, apologizes for not answering my question earlier, and then says that he would have responded, “With rage and despair.”

Wilfred Owen wrote:

Head to limp head, the sunk-eyed wounded scanned
Yesterday’s Mail; the casualties (typed small)
And (large) Vast Booty from our Latest Haul.
Also, they read of Cheap Homes, not yet planned,
‘For,’ said the paper, ‘when this war is done
The men’s first instinct will be making homes.
Meanwhile their foremost need is aerodomes,
It being certain war has but begun.
Peace would do wrong to our undying dead,—
The sons we offered might regret they died
If we got nothing lasting in their stead.
We must be solidly indemnified.
Though all be worthy Victory which all bought,
We rulers sitting in this ancient spot
Would wrong our very selves if we forgot
The greatest glory will be theirs who fought,
Who kept this nation in integrity.’

The complete poem is here.

Later note: I overheard this in the Burlington airport back in March. Father to young son: “That’s what poetry is—words that rhyme that no one understands.”

Snakes, Owls, Tree Frogs on a Plane

So Bjork arrived at her Times interview wearing “white rubber rain boots and a sweater with a knitted owl across the front,” and that sounds like a great outfit that I’d like a lot. Now that swans are carrying bird flu, a fact that upsets me quite a bit but probably upsets Bjork even more, will she sport fewer avian flourishes, or more, in solidarity? Will the owls, and birds in general, that have been preoccupying designers diminish with the murdered turkeys?

I think they won’t; I think they’ll proliferate, just as National Geographic specials multiplied as the rainforests were cut down. (Remember that great essay about how we have no idea how little there is left of the wilderness because there are so many nature shows? Was it in Harper’s, maybe, sometime in the ’90s?) I think we’ll need to wear more birds, made soft and friendly, and have more bird figurines in our houses, chirping in unsinister ways. It can’t be a coincidence that all the fun of Snakes on a Plane is happening as we head for the release of United 93 and the five-year anniversary of September 11.

Alongside its other virtues, art can fuzzify fear, taking the edge off the badness and making demons into friends. With whimsical birds and silly planes, we’re creating a cuter version of the fallen world (that could be a description of Bjork, too). Martin McDonagh, let’s say, distills humans’ obvious debasement into an even bloodier one, and I admire the artistry and honesty. On the other hand, there are the ostriches in Twilight of the Ice Nymphs, sticking their heads into everything and getting feathers everywhere, totally mortal and still heedlessly gawky in their enthusiasm. I like things with feathers, I confess.

“It was me, looking back at me!”


From The Beachwood Reporter, which I just discovered, a sweet song list from a 1991 mix tape, made by then-13-year-old writer Michael Brett. Brett makes himself sound like a pinup for Pathetic Geek Stories (“The year before, two eighth-graders threw me in the dumpster, and the principal yelled at me because my clothes were too filthy for class”), and is thoroughly lovable. Samples:

You’re Crazy (Guns N’ Roses, from Appetite for Destruction)
I ripped off Columbia House for the first time at 10 and started my music collection. I peeled the wrapper off this cassette with my teeth when it finally arrived. I played this cassette so much over the next three years, the mechanism snapped. I grew up with six sisters, and other girls were not my forte. I wanted to run down 95th Street singing this song at every woman I met, shouting them down. I had some misogyny issues to resolve.
…
The Warmth of the Sun (The Beach Boys, from Endless Summer)
My sisters listened to crappy music. Phil Collins. Huey Lewis and the News. The Outfield. But they owned a ton of Beach Boys–records, 8-tracks, cassettes–nearly everything. This was my blues. Get cut from the team? Listen to Brian Wilson. Not get a girl to skate with you? Listen to Brian Wilson. Friends ditch you? Listen to Brian Wilson. Guy always knew what to say and empathized with you like crazy. The opening harmony of this song is a straight out music taste scythe for me to this day. Either you get goose bumps, or you just don’t get it.
…
Alison (Elvis Costello, from My Aim Is True)
First, the cover. It was me, looking back at me! Then this song. Almost Chuck Berry wedded to the Beach Boys. I could have sworn Elvis ripped it out of my heart’s teletype. And my sisters loved him, so I knew he eventually got the girl. Elvis still gives me that faith.

4th of July, Asbury Park (Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, from Live/1975-85)
If you are a Brett, you wear Chuck Taylors and have a complete devotion to Bruce. I don’t remember life before him, because to me it didn’t exist. 1978, he was already the Boss. Bruce was sui generis, all eventual music I held dear to this day derives from him. And this song, well, it was nothing but electric. It’s West Side Story mated to S.E. Hinton. I hung on every recycled word of it, because new to me then didn’t matter. When you’re 13, everything is new and most of it absolutely sucks. You want warm blankets. Bruce is still mine.

I’d love to see a scan of the tape-case insert (which my friend Darren reminds me is called a J-card) to see Brett’s handwriting, and maybe even some Led Zep iconography.

Image above borrowed from this lament about the unromantic nature of mix CDs: “So, music technology industry, go screw yourself. I blame it solely on you. My amazing then-boyfriend slipped up and fell prey to your evil futuristic ways. While the future is pretty cool and all, it’s significantly less amorous. I’ve never seen someone look sexy in something that is silver, shiny and round. But put that same person in a little black number with holes cut out for the nipples and you’ve got something.”

No Restraint in “Drawing Restraint”

Once you’re done reading the Matthew Barney profile from the New Yorker archives, read my arty friend Paddy’s funny review of Barney’s new movie:

The jelly scenes are a rehashing of more successful work in the Cremaster series, and the commitment ceremony violates some of the most fundamental principles of sound art making practice, namely that if you are Matthew Barney you should NEVER EVER use CGI. Barney has no aptitude with digital mediums, and has demonstrated this both in Cremaster 3, when he used an animation program to spin a ribbon falling from the top of the Empire State building, thereby cheesifing what would have been a nearly perfectly visually contructed movie (speaking strickly of the first half), and in Drawing Restraint 9 where any underwater shot he’s made looks stupid because the computer generated images are poorly excecuted and he has chosen to render something in a medium that makes no sense relative to his larger working process. Here’s all of it.

In NYC? Volunteer for the PEN World Voices Festival, April 25-30

News from my employer—jump on this; it’s going to be fun!

Call for Volunteers

PEN World Voices Festival:
The New York Festival of International Literature

April 25-30, 2006

All about the festival.

PEN American Center needs event volunteers to work front of house, back of house and other related posts for their annual Festival of International Literature. Volunteers are asked to spend one full day with PEN working three to four events centered around some the world’s most famous writers.

If you are interested please e-mail Andrew Proctor at aproctor@pen.org and list your availability, contact information (e-mail address, postal address and phone numbers) and any foreign languages you speak.

Deadline for responses: April 14, 2006.

Today at 4: Sipress, Koren, and Smaller at Makor

Event reminder:

You can still get a ticket for the Ed Koren, Barbara Smaller, and David Sipress conversation at Makor—this is a great series. Buy tickets and get more info here, or just hustle up to Makor for funny people and wine (included in the price of admission).

NYer Cartoonists at Makor in NYC, 4/9
Click to enlarge.

Update: What a fun afternoon-to-evening—well organized, thoughtful, and totally entertaining. The Makor audience certainly knew its New Yorker cartoons (could you identify a Booth line from a single squiggle?), but the event wasn’t bathed in nostalgia. In fact, the conversation turned into a meditation on how cartoonists negotiate particularly unfunny times and learn how to turn anxiety and disgruntlement (or as we say in my family, being grundled—disgruntlement + Pogo‘s Grundoon) into wit. Koren, Smaller, and Sipress were warm, self-deprecating, and admirably articulate, and I’m looking forward to talking to all of them again. Fuller report to follow, but don’t miss the next one! The wine was good, too.

I Wish I Could Go Back to College, In College You Know Who You Are

From a LiveJournal blog:

all nighter – Salinger & Seymour – 1948 – update within the update

4am – I’m here and will be here all night writing a six-page paper about this…

J. D. Salinger
A Perfect Day for Bananafish
The New Yorker, January 31, 1948, pages 21-25

[“Bananafish” link]

I realized I shouldn’t spoil anything, so just read it, and you’ll understand why I find it ironic that I’m wearing a Puma shirt that uses “Puma Since 1948” to monet a bigger picture. Arg. How things work out.

lol.

****

update with the update

I finished my paper, the rough draft, and the reflection. This was ISA all over again. Unforunately, I can’t fully extend my left leg, and I haven’t felt it hurt this much in a while. ERG!

I’ve been thinking about Changes all night- The Bruce Hornsby and Tupac version. I think I know why. Read Teddy and Bananfish by J.D. Salinger. Why didn’t Teddy resist? Why did Seymour do what he did unemotionally? Vedanta Hinduism?

A Reader Writes: How Long Do New Yorker Stories Stay Online?


I’ve wondered about this, too. Luckily, we’ve got the answer from the ultimate source, New Yorker Head of Library Jon Michaud. Here’s the reader’s question:

I was trying to find that really, really long profile of Matthew Barney that ran a year or two ago, but I can’t find it—I only come up with some Talk of the Town references and a review or two. And some of the Google hits lead to dead links anyway.

Any idea?

And here’s Jon’s answer:

It’s a complicated answer, so here goes:

The New Yorker web site only publishes selections from each week’s print issue. Those selections go up each Monday, except for the second Monday of a double issue.

At the end of a given week, the links to the stories on the web site are broken, but those stories remain on the web site (except, in some cases, when there are electronic rights restrictions) and are searchable through the search engine on the NewYorker.com site. That search engine will only find articles from February of ’05 to the present. (This is not an arbitrary cutoff: The Complete New Yorker goes up to Feb. of ’05.) Stories published on the web site prior to Feb. ’05 are still up and can be found using Google.

As for the Matthew Barney, it did not run on our web site. It appeared in the magazine on January 27, 2003, by Calvin Tomkins. If your correspondent wants to read it, he has four options: get it from Lexis-Nexis or ProQuest, make a copy from a library, buy a back issue from 1-800-825-2510, or buy The Complete New Yorker.

Of course, I think the last option is the best. Who can tolerate Nexis for New Yorker stories (or anything else, really) now that you can read the original page, zooming in and out to your heart’s content? Think of all the potential “Missing a Piece of Your Pattern?” viewing opportunities! Is anyone in the world as disturbed/enchanted by that haunting ad as I am, I wonder?

Desperately seeking Matthew Barney?

Anyway, thanks very much, Jon. This isn’t the first quandary the modest New Yorker library enchilada has solved for us (he was last seen giving a flummoxed reader tips on printing from the DVD archive). And now I feel like reading that Barney profile—all I remember is the Bjork profile that mentioned their relationship. I liked that profile (by Alex Ross, August 23, 2004)—among other things, it was a cool portrait of the Icelandic landscape and Bjork’s funnily low-key local life.