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04.28.05 you knew the day will come — the hipster idealism turning it's back on the dark depths of obscurity that it has helped bring into the light. when everyone else knows about your difficult, unknown music, then it stops being cool. what's left but to run back to what you've convinced everyone else is hateful and embrace it? pop lives. but if anyone is going to lead the way, it doesn't get any better than will schwartz. known for his role in imperial teen, schwartz has been pursuing new frontiers of cool with his indie super-pop dance music troupe, hey willpower. they are, in a word, awesome. and this week, they're on the front page of the bay guardian. check out the article, and if you get a chance, the show. have a few drinks before the show starts, and if you're not dancing and smiling before it's over, then you're probably not human. or suffering from degenerative osteoporosis. # super. nerdy. ars technica's intense technical review of mac os x 10.4. at 22 pages, it's not for the faint of heart. # 04.26.05 an all-electric scooter. specs sound pretty good for in-city travel, and it looks pretty good too. although you'd think they would take the plastic off the seat before they take the publicity photos, you know? # oh no! the doves show scheduled for this sunday is postponed! boo hoo. no word yet from the venue or ticketmonster, so i have no idea when it will be rescheduled. and i was so looking forward to this one. # 04.24.05 i don't even have a copy of os x 10.4 yet, but i know that i'm about to desperately want someone to write a dashboard widget for nextbus. and then for muni to put one of my buses on it, of course. # oh, hello common sense. it's street-level coverage map from a cellphone carrier. who thought one of them would ever be good to us? # 04.22.05 women, rejoice: the sponge is back. # 04.19.05 somewhat amazingly, it appears that a massive portion of the radiohead catalog has appeared for digital download from war child music, the children's charity website that sells exclusive downloadable music. war child came about from the ashes of the venerable Help EP (of same charitable function) that introduced the world to the song Lucky. the digital back catalog has a lot of important holes, like most of the international release EPs, including my favorite, running from demons, the japan EP supporting No Surprises. my favorite radiohead b-side (Pearly*) only appears on that EP. the Airbag EP (US) and the Com Lag EP (Japan) are also missing. Oh, and war child (stupidly!) doesn't seem to offer mac-supported tracks for download. sorry, brent. # 04.18.05 adobe buys macromedia. that's...huge. changes pretty much, oh, everything in the graphics software market. and maybe the internet, too. i mean, let's open up flash, huh? flashy-pdfs. how about that? or maybe they were feeling the heat from the gimp. yeah, probably not. via waxy # 04.17.05 probably one of the best birthday presents i got was a surprise advance of spoon's latest album, gimme fiction. it's a hyperbolic composition, awash in crashing cymbals, fuzzing guitars and sweeping piano. at times calling to mind the beatles, wilco, and even tom petty, the album resonates with a kind of 60's and 70's rock aesthetic that colors the music, but never overwhelms it. britt daniel's voice warbles out his unique sound, playing across the top of precise, dense production and loose arrangements. a defining piano floats through the album, sometimes wandering within a song and sometimes thumping out a driving rhythm that pushes the song forward. the album is painted with simple, beautiful strings that emerge in swirling eddies throughout the album. crashing, angry cymbals disrupt a number of tracks, creative a sweeping emotional climax that sometimes obscures the album's more crafted catchiness. stand-out tracks include the thumping, eye-crossing i turn my camera on, the clean-scrubbed, simple the delicate place, the swirling, clapping rhythms of they never got you and the spooky, brief album closer the merchants of soul. other songs offer a kind of quirky catchiness, like the fuzzed out beatles-esque album opener the beast and dragon, adored and the slightly silly and very-tom-petty the two sides of monsier valentine. immediate and hook-filled, sister jack might be the most radio-friendly song, with it's odd lyrics falling in-between the jangly guitar/tambourine out front and the rigid, tumbling drum in the back. fans of the clever, proggy pinback ep offcell should find something to love in the track was it you. the first half of the album delivers a neat, clever sort of indie-rock, while the second is a darker and spookier affair. overall, the album offers a distinct, original and thoughtful sound. gimme fiction is out on may 10 and is an absolute must-have. # 04.15.05 i was just googling an author someone mentioned and came across this. i think i heard about google's project to put books online, but this was the first time a search had actually resulted in an immediately readable sample of an author's writing. i know amazon's had this (search inside the book) for a while now, but google's moved it one step closer for me, and i think they've gotten in front of the friction point. # 04.13.05 i have a giddy compulsion towards the coming out book. you've probably read this book, the one about the gay youth who (already aware of his own sexuality) is launched into various misadventures as he is forced to declare himself, for better or for worse, to the rest of the world. there are three hundred thousand variations on this story, the bulk of the gay lit genre in fact, and almost every one of them is completely soap oprahish; many are just plain awful. in spite of this, or maybe because of it, i find myself drawn to them. it's a kind of voyeuristic compulsion, i think. so of course i was anxious watching jessie quickly consume tom dolby's debut novel, the trouble boy. his speed said something about the book, since he's such a painfully thorough reader. while it's not directly in the coming out book (sub-)genre, the book is clearly family to those novels. it's the story of a young gay man living in new york, finding friendship and chasing love, sex and success. it's not the most imaginative story, but it's accessible, and it's neither too tangental or too unbelievable. it seems to want to be a meditation on the drug of success, but not as much as the explosion of marketing on the back cover would lead you to believe. the story casts the central character into so many different situations at such a rapid pace that a really cohesive theme around the success subject doesn't have time to gestate. the writing is good (much more solid than i was expecting, actually), but sometimes seems hurried. dolby's voice is easy and comfortable — so much that i was often left wondering how many moments were culled from real life experience. but it's a smartly assembled story, side-stepping whatever problems or shortcomings may be inherent. the pacing is fast and pulls the reader along at a brisk pace. it's an easy book to get into, and a very fast read. toby, the central character, is compelling (though sometimes annoying), and strongly developed. the rest of the characters seem to suffer a bit, in contrast. dolby makes toby interesting and resonant, but seems to play a bit loosely with his internal conflicts, casting him alternatingly as both wild and surprisingly moralistic. it gives a believable kind of depth to his character, but if there was any intent at work to draw larger connections between the his and present actions, it was lost on me. i tend to enjoy novels that are written with a transparent style. it figures heavy in my selection, and was one of the reasons i started but never finished sarah. JT LeRoy's frantic, almost claustrophobic writing and that book's circus tent storyline both turned me off so much that the tiny (infinitesimally small, in fact) book is still sitting half finished on my book pile. although the novel is much loved, and certainly a critical shot-gun announcing the author's arrival, i felt pushed away by the flash of it, instead of drawn in. although a comparison between the two seems unfair, i can help but look at the trouble boy in contrast; it doesn't reach for too much, and as such manages to fulfill it's own promises. it's certain to win fans, or have already won them, since it's out in paperback, especially in the 26 and under crowd. (where jessie felt like he was not part of the target audience, i was clearly in it's cross-hairs.) more than anything, the book was enjoyable #&151 certainly enough that i'll be interested to see what dolby does next. # lexisnexis looses 310,000 names. and ids. the venerable information company got hacked at seisint, the data-brokering arm of their electronic information and records empire. shouldn't there be some kind of regulation of companies like seisint and experian and equifax? when these people are compiling personal data on millions of people, you'd think someone might be interested in how well they're doing it and how effectively they're protecting our information. # 04.11.05 "Saturday night in a San Francisco bathhouse -- a scene straight out of hell ... so sordid, so shocking, so sinful and morally repulsive, you'll never see it on the evening news. Howard Stern doesn't come close, and even the eighteenth-century sensualist, the Marquis de Sade, could scarcely imagine the sheer degradation and perversion that occurs in places like this on regular basis, virtually around the clock." oooh, sounds fun! i want to be there. certainly would beat being back in my oh-so-friendly home town. crazy redneck haters? sure, they're welcome on saturday nights too! my favorite quote of the whole article though, is from craig sweeney, associate pastor of the delightful People's Church of Fresno, who sounds like he might also be contributing to another famous fresno statistic: "It's sordid affairs. It's high drug use. It's high abuse. The kids are the ones who are left trying to figure out what's life all about. They're saying, 'Now my dad is wearing a dress and getting his facial hair burned off, trying to get that figured out so he can do whatever he's going to do, and I'm supposed to figure out what's normal in my life.' And there's nothing normal about it." so uh, what the hell is he talking about, anyway? # happy blogoversary, baby. nice hat. # 04.10.05 i'm back in san francisco now and trying to psych myself up for work and the return to normal. portland was exactly what i'd hoped for — a quiet, simple weekend, the restorative powers of old friendships and the wet, green pacific northwest. portland's a great city, maybe the antidote for some of what ails san francisco. it certainly worked for me. darin and mette put off a relaxing aura and make it really easy to just hang around. of course, they're quite people, and i'm tinged with neurotisicm, so i spent the better part of the weekend catching myself running off at the mouth, mindlessly prattling to fill any and all silence. it was cleansing though. we hung out all weekend, wandering around and exploring the city. i got to meet some of their friends and we had a very lively dinner party saturday night. someone brought another out of town friend, a wonderful, feisty professor from berkeley who added a different (good) dimension to the evening. we tried to see a show, but it sold out while we were in line and we wound up at a cute, dim little restaurant/bar for drinks and desert. i got to see the parks, downtown, transit and hipsters of portland. it's got a great vibe, and the only thing i didn't get a feeling for was the gay culture. but i'll leave that for another trip. the other thing i did this weekend is listen the hell out of the new spoon album. kate and jen gave me an advance copy as a birthday present, and it's probably the most fucking awesome thing i've heard. i can't stop playing it. expect a review of some sort later this week. update: it looks like flickr hasn't been receiving any of my messages all weekend, so none of my portland pictures got posted. aggravating, since i didn't save any on my phone. what was that yahoo acquisition supposed to accomplish, anyway? # 04.09.05 i'm in portland right now, visiting old friends for the weekend. it's so pleasant here, everything so relaxed and green and fresh. it feels like a visual (and mental) cleansing to walk around the damp, calm streets. i celebrated my birthday this week, and had a great, if not exhausting time doing it. (too many) drinks with friends last night (great fun, until i had to roll it over into the worst flight of my life), an excellent birthday dinner and surprise from jessie, and a chance to go to the opening day giants game on tuesday. it was hard to keep my head on straight, but i really enjoyed myself while doing it. now, hopefully, i can rest and recuperate a little bit up here and wind up back home, ready to take on another year. # delightful san francisco indie-rock dilettantes stratford 4 are no more. which is sad, but not entirely earth shattering. their new album (recorded, release tbd) will be their last. # 04.07.05 i want to start using the newly expanded upcoming.org as much as possible. not quite appropriate for a master-calender system, but nice that i can grab an ical or rss of my specific events, as well as friends or events for my specific metro (why is there an SF and an SF bay area metro?!). this means i'll never have to send an evite, ever! thank god. # 04.03.05 cityscape mentioned redevelopment plans for the mid-market hood, better known to you and i as the lovable but skeezy stretch of market between powell street and civic center. if only the hipsters weren't so selective with their indie-artist powers of gentrification, we might have taken care of this neat little stretch of street on our own. # i just re-read a favorite short story of mine. i have a few compilations of raymond carver's work, and i had only read this one (a small, good thing) from an older, shorter collection that i adore. but today i went looking for it in one of his longer collections, his last, in fact, only to discover an entire second half of the story that i'd never read. was it missing from the earlier book? maybe the following pages were torn out? or the story revised at a later time? the result, of course, is an entirely different story. still just as interesting (perhaps a bit more typically carver), but different. it's a strange feeling to discover, leaving the story fragmented in my mind between the two versions. update: looks like the older, shorter version of this story was called the bath. supposedly (i've never seen it), the altman film shortcuts was based on a series of carver stories, including this one. i wonder which version it was? # friday night, my hot boyfriend and i joined forces with the matts to rock the most awesomest scavenger hunt ever, hosted by ryan and co. some select lo-fi photo moment from the evening (hover for comments):
# 04.02.05 neil young hospitalized for brain aneurysm. jesus christ, when will this almost-dying fad just end already? # 04.01.05 april 1 tends to be a bad day for the gullible, but i think google's kinda serious. once more, i ask, does anyone want a gmail account? # walking back from lunch this afternoon, i had a daydream. i won the lottery and i was spending my winnings. i was magnanimous, of course. my rich-life looked a lot like this one. all i was missing was the big idea. # « March 2005 | archive index | May 2005 » built with movabletype |
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