Thu 7 Aug 2008
Thu 31 Jul 2008
If you like reading books, you start a book club. If you like reading short stories, do you start a short story club? Is this allowed? Lots of upside there: plenty of good short-format fiction out there, variety of reading keeps interest up, and variety of discussion at meetings. Plus it’s easier to cram for a club meeting.
Downside? Finding the short stories probably won’t be quite as easy as finding books. There are short-story collections in book form, but the point of the club would be to read several writers each month. Members might have to find content online and either read it on the computer or print it out, which isn’t ideal. Plus it’s easier to cram for a club meeting.
Places you can find fiction include The New Yorker and… I’ve got some research to do.
I’m going to try it. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Mon 28 Jul 2008
Dear Sara,
Just writing you because you’ve been working a lot, and I don’t like long emails. Plus, I thought you might want an actual letter to read when you’re on your break. Hopefully this finds you before it finds the bottom of the recycling bin, along with the budget-saver coupons. I don’t exactly comb through my mail these days either.
How is working on the boat these days? I know you really liked it at first, but I imagine the excitement wanes after another 42-year-old married claims adjuster meanders up to the bar with money and a pick-up line. I suppose it’s too much to expect these guys to realize that bartenders are friendly to get more tips. I suppose pushing drunks overboard is against tour-boat policy. Next time it happens, tell the guy last call was 10 minutes ago, but you’ll gladly take his money and a generous tip for serving him one last watered-down drink. You could even say it in a friendly way.
I’ve been listening to some good music lately, and you know me, I have to tell someone about it. What would good musicians do if real fans didn’t spread the word? They wouldn’t be musicians. Springsteen would have never left Jersey, Bob Dylan would still be Robert Zimmerman, and the Beatles would be just about ready to retire as regular blokes. True, John Lennon might still be alive, but maybe he’d have been run over by a bus instead. Maybe it’s Ringo who gets flattened…hmmm…the hypotheticals are endless. Make it a game and distract the boat drunks with it. Anyway, you’re my only sibling that cares about music, so I won’t carbon the others on this.
In case you didn’t hear, Radiohead came out with a new one called In Rainbows. I know, know. I’ve harped on you for years about how Radiohead will go down as one of the best bands ever, and how OK Computer is probably the best album I’ve ever heard. I know I’m biased because they hit when I was in my 20s, which makes them way more important to me than they ever will be to you Gen Y musicheads. Every generation has their cultural anchors – but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong about Radiohead.
They’re too established to be cutting edge musically, but I think selling this new album over the internet themselves and letting customers name their price was a fairly rebellious DIY bird-flip to the industry and its crumbling model of making money. I don’t know if they will ever reveal that they likely didn’t solve the money issue with their social experiment – but I’m not looking for another confirmation that the music-buying public is a bunch of cheap-ass thieves these days. I blame Napster. I blame myself. Mostly I blame Napster.
If you can block out the album reviews and business-page articles about the future of music sales and just spend some time with In Rainbows, it’s an amazing album. It actually reminds me more of Arcade Fire than any Kid A/Amnesiac-era Radiohead. It’s every bit as epic as the Montreal’s reigning masters of chamber pop, but they do it effortlessly, with synthesizers and guitars instead of the orchestra for the most part, and its my favorite record of theirs since OK.
That is the trick isn’t it? Sitting down with the album and listening without preconception or prejudice, I mean. I know it’s nearly impossible. Someone can put an idea in your head about a song or a band, and it can completely change how you hear that music, for good or bad. Mr. Claims Adjuster might be the nicest guy in the world, but you first met him as a floating idiot, and that’s a pretty powerful impression. Claims adjusters, of all people, ought to know that not all damage can be undone.
How about an unknown British band then? Every American should know about Elbow, but instead they know about Coldplay and Keane, which is too bad. Elbow sounds like Peter Gabriel would sound if, for each album, he dared himself to write eight or so gorgeous ballads every bit as good as Salisbury Hill, and then mixed in a couple rockers just to take the edge off the weepiness. They’re a late-at-night-with-the-headphones kind of band, with little details to be discovered each time you listen. Their newest is The Seldom Seen Kid.
Hard to say why bands like Elbow never get as popular as they should. I don’t try to understand it any more than I try to figure out why synth-pop was more popular than punk in the 1980s, or why millions of people know there’s a band called Chumbawumba. Some of this stuff is simply inexplicable.
The last item I wanted to discuss was The Raconteurs, but I’m not so much recommending them as I am warning you they’re a little uneven. Not that I’m surprised. Jack White has been releasing White Stripes albums for years that throw together songs from all sorts of styles. They hit and they miss and none of it’s cohesive. The man who includes a non-ironic children’s song about friends going to school on what is essentially a punk rock album is a man unconcerned with thematic and stylistic continuity.
The Raconteurs albums are the same way. The new one is called Consolers of the Lonely. I enjoy the variety, but I tend to like their hard-hitting garage/punk more than their quirky experiments with slower-paced country rock or classic rock. Sometimes I wish Jack would embrace the aphorism “know thyself.” Even though he’s got the talent to do more than just rock out, he’s rocks out better than almost everyone out there. Oh well, I guess I can’t blame a guy for mixing it up.
I apologize for the ancient form of media. Be thankful I didn’t write with a quill, roll it up, and stick it in a wine bottle. Can you imagine the anarchy it would cause if some kid on the shores of Lake Minnetonka found a letter in a bottle? Somebody would probably call the evening news. “Why would someone communicate in such a way? Why not just use a cellphone? Or Facebook at the very least? Mom, how old was I when they closed all the post offices?”
Sincerely,
Your Brother
Tue 22 Jul 2008
It’s been a long political season, and it’s still not over. Almost everything about it is annoying to me right now, even though I think it’s incredibly important. To get me through to November, a plea to all journalists, bloggers, and talking heads: don’t use the term “flip-flop” anymore. If you do I am going to hunt you down. It is by far the most annoying part of a campaign season filled with very annoying parts.
Initially, I blamed Karl Rove for inventing this term, this boy-it’s-stupid-but-it-sure-did-work tactic that helped sink John Kerry. I was wrong. Turns out this term was used before 1900 in the same context. Rove isn’t so much an evil genius as he is a creative recycler of dirty tricks. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
If a politician changes his/her mind on something, I’m willing to hear the reason for it. Reasonable people change their minds all the time, given new information. It’s when they lie about their position (depending on the audience), or lie about changing their position, that they need to be slapped. Just don’t slap them with the flip-flopper tag, you lazy media pundits. Find another way to say it.
Flip-flops are annoying - the term and the footwear. But by all means, wear flip-flops to the beach. Wear them to a black-tie party fundraiser if you like. Make that annoying little slap-slappy noise with every step for all I care. Just don’t call them by name. I’m begging you.