that’s me, the boy with the broken halo

I dance a lot more lately.  I’ve had a great set of speakers for more than a year, but since my MBP only has single-channel audio, up to this point they haven’t been good so much as they’ve been… loud.  Hooked up to a proper sound card, though, it’s a whole different animal.  I put my chair right in the sweet spot where the speakers all balance perfectly and the subwoofer makes the coffee in my mug ripple like the fucking T-Rex from Jurassic Park is coming and it’s just pure aural sex.  There’s no going back now.  I’m an audiophile.

And just in time, it seems, because I’M GOING TO BONNAROO!  So, in honor of my new obsession with sonic perfection, here’s an all-Bonnaroo 2011 edition of What I’m Listening To.

HBO’s Treme has officially piqued my interest in modern New Orleans jazz.  I’m about to start watching the Ken Burns Jazz documentary to get up on the history, but right now I’m having a goddamn blast just listening to random songs from the soundtrack.  Am I a poseur?  Yes.  Do I care?  No.

I’ve always loved The Black Keys, but I usually just ended up listening to 2004′s Rubber Factory over and over again.  It’s not that I didn’t like their new stuff, it’s just that none of it really dug into me and refused to leave like the first hypnotic beats of “When The Lights Go Out”.  Brothers was a total return to form, doubling down on their heavily percussive, bluesy sound, and “Sinister Kid” demonstrates everything I love about the band.

There are people passed out on the floor with dicks drawn on their faces – that’s how late I am to the Arcade Fire party.  They’ve won a fucking Grammy, for god’s sake!  I just started listening, can’t really put into words yet what makes their music so infectious, but this song gives me the “holy shit” chills.

I read a review of The Decemberists once that called their music “rock for English majors”, and I think that’s a phenomenal compliment.  Sure, they’re intelligent and literate, but the whole thing only works because, first and foremost, they can burn the fucking house down.  This might be the band I’m most excited to see.

grab that cash with both hands and make a stash

I’m less busy than normal lately.  Also, thanks to Jess, I have a new toy!

Holy shit I love this thing. Sure, the battery life’s a little meh, and the implementation of the touchscreen at the bottom justifies my suspicion that most consumer electronics are designed by malicious chimps, but it’s perfect for me. It lets me read in bed without shining a backlight directly into my cornea and only requires one hand to turn pages, allowing me to fall asleep while reading comfortably on my side. Awesome.

Free time + new gadget = reading a ton. And I’ve just finished two books that I’m adding to all y’all’s required reading list. They’re by the same author and tell what essentially amounts to the same astonishingly true story, just from two different decades and two different perspectives: Michael Lewis’s Liar’s Poker and The Big Short. Liar’s Poker chronicles Lewis’s career at Salomon Brothers (HUGE investment bank, acquired in ’98 by Citigroup, one of the biggest beneficiaries of the bailouts and TARP) throughout the mid-to-late ’80s, but more impressively, describes Wall Street culture, specifically that of bond traders, in hilarious and infuriating detail. The Big Short jumps ahead to the 21st century to tell the tale of the 2008 financial meltdown, only through the eyes of the bizarre assortment of misfits and outsiders who not only saw the housing crash and ensuing crisis coming, but put their money where their mouths were, making a fortune.

These two works answer the question “How could this have happened?” with startling clarity: a relatively small group of people whose interests revolve entirely around short-term gains at the expense of everything else, plus a total disregard for anything other than their own personal success (Liar’s Poker), figured out how to turn shitty mortgages into pure profit by consolidating them into gigantic, complex bonds nobody bothered to understand, and calling them gold (The Big Short).  What ensued was a situation where investment bankers were making obscene profits essentially making massive bets (among themselves, with other people’s money) that housing prices would rise forever, and wiped out a huge chunk of the world’s wealth when they lost.

These stories make me almost apoplectic, and they’re only focused on the Wall Street side of the crisis. There’s a whole OTHER story to be told, about how the U.S. government has systematically coddled and supported this entire industry over the last 30 fucking years through Democratic and Republican administrations in the name of free enterprise and market capitalism, artificially keeping dangerously reckless institutions alive so they can become even bigger and more powerful so the next time they gleefully leap on their own swords it’ll take even MORE taxpayer money to save their dumb asses again!

And then these SAME institutions and people fight to the fucking death any effort to keep them from doing it again, or mitigating the damage they’ve inflicted, or raising their taxes even the slightest amount, because it’s “socialism”!  The bailed-out Wall Street investment firms have recovered and their employees are making more than ever. Corporate profits as a whole have never been higher. The nation’s wealth is becoming increasingly concentrated in the top levels of society, while the average wage has been stagnating since the ’70s. It’s insane, it’s criminal, and I need take a break from writing to go scream into a pillow while beating the shit out of another pillow.

Phew.

This probably stopped sounding like a ringing endorsement a few paragraphs ago, but I really can’t recommend these books enough.  It’s important that we all understand this shit.  Otherwise, it will never, ever stop.

I also read Neil Gaiman’s American Gods.  It is also awesome, but more importantly, never put me at risk for a brain aneurysm.

these things I believe

• There is more to our reality than meets the eye. We will get better and better at modeling and understanding the universe we live in, but it will be a process that is both infinite and infinitely surprising.
• Anyone who tells you they have all the answers is lying, deluded or, most likely, both.
• Happiness means nothing without pain. The greatest sorrow is made beautiful by the fact that it makes joy possible.
• The most dangerous people in the world are those who believe, without any doubt or hesitation, that they’re doing the right thing.
• There is no such thing as true freedom; rather, we simply choose which forces to subject ourselves to.
• There is nothing in this world so horrible, sad, or terrifying that it can’t be laughed at.

I’ve been reading a lot about totalitarianism lately and I needed a pick-me-up, then I remembered this movie.

Good films hold up as they age.  Great films don’t ever age.  They don’t ever stop being relevant or insightful.  Today, The Great Dictator makes me think about Tunisia and Egypt and Libya and Bahrain and Yemen and Iran and Saudi Arabia and how the desire for freedom from oppression is universal.  And it makes me hopeful, because Chaplin released this courageous and hilarious film in 1940, a full year before the U.S. entered World War II, when there was no guarantee the Nazi war machine could ever be stopped.

When Charlie Chaplin spoke in a movie, he made it count.  He hated Hitler before hating Hitler was cool.  Hell, he hated Hitler before Hitler was Hitler.  Today, they’d call him a socialist.  Wait, they called him a socialist then.  See?  Still relevant!

don’t you cry tonight

Happy Casimir Pulaski Day, everyone!

This was going to be a post about things that make me cry, until I realized that I can sum it up with a pretty succinct list:

• The end of the following things: The Iron Giant, Big Fish, the episode of Futurama with Fry’s dog, Synecdoche New York, and a new discovery, the Van Gogh episode of Doctor Who.
• This music video, especially after reading his autobiography.
• This one, too.
• that’s not it, but it’s all I can think of right now. If you can remember me crying about something that isn’t related to breakups or family/pets dying, let me know.

so, uh, yeah, not a great post, but I’m not gonna get all teary-eyed for nothing.  So here’s a quick music update to round out the fail:

You might know and quite possibly despise these guys as the artists behind “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell”.  The entirety of Sit Down, Man is equal parts bizarre and compelling. I really like it and I can’t even begin to explain why.

Childish Gambino just proves something I’ve suspected for a long time: I love anything and everything Donald Glover does.

Again, outside of my normal sphere of stuff I like, but daaaaamn this shit is fun.

A band I only know about because they were mentioned in High Fidelity.

I have a difficult time calling what Girl Talk does “mash-ups”. A mash-up seems like it should just be two, maybe three songs sewn together, meshing and complementing each other but still maintaining their separate identities.  Greg Gillis, on the other hand, uses different artists and songs the way a conductor directs an orchestra – establishing motifs and building a larger theme. Listening to just one track off a Girl Talk album is a little like listening to just one movement of a symphony: sure, you can do it, but why?

don’t stop me now

Let’s get this out of the way right off the bat: I’m not a car guy.  I didn’t even get my license until I was 18, and the reason is that I am inherently scared of anything in which I feel like I have a better-than-average chance of dying.  If push came to shove, I might be able to change a tire after looking up detailed directions on my phone, but ask me to tell you who manufactures a particular vehicle and I’m totally stumped.  One day when I buy a car, I’m probably going to waste a LOT of time trying to find a used CR-V exactly like Dad’s, because I prefer things I’m used to and couldn’t give a flying fuck about anything else.

That all being said, I am obsessed with Top Gear.

Top Gear can be summed up pretty succinctly: Three British gearheads review and test cars.  That’s pretty much it, and the format is nothing special, but the delightfully goofy, sharp-witted enthusiasm of the hosts, plus the sometimes quite insane challenges they undertake to keep the “let’s drive cars fast!” formula fresh, makes the whole thing something incredibly special.  An example:  the hosts are challenged to choose which is the perfect luxury car for the head of the Albanian mafia, a high-end Rolls-Royce, Mercedes, or Bentley (Bentley backs out, so they substitute a piece of crap Yugo and spend the rest of the episode complaining about how shitty their Bentley is). This would be entertaining in and of itself, but they opt to actually go to Albania in order to drive these cars around, then decide to pull a bank heist:

Expertly filmed, entertaining and funny.  There’s also the challenge where each of the three builds their own version of the ideal motor home, and Jeremy comes up with a multistory monstrosity with a kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, and Japanese zen garden.

And then they destroy it, because why not?

What really makes the show, though, isn’t just the silly and contrived gimmicks they use to show off the cars, but rather the intense love that these men have for well-built, fast machines.  I largely view driving a car as an inconvenience, and considering that most people’s interactions with their cars boil down to gridlock and expensive repair bills, this isn’t exactly an unpopular opinion.  These guys don’t agree.

“It’s wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.”  Blasting down an open road snaking through the countryside, feeling the machine around you purr and growl as you push it to the limit, the utter and delirious joy of speed is palpable in every syllable they speak about the best cars.  I still don’t know shit about cars, but I love them a little more with every episode.

 

it makes me happy to see you walkin’

OK, let’s never get that drunk again.

things I’ve discovered lately:

• The best cure for a hangover is going to Hard Times and getting tea and an omelet. I was supposed to meet someone there, but A Thing Happened and I ended up eating alone, which sounds sad when you just put it like that, but I actually love it. The difference between loneliness and solitude is anything but subtle, but I only came to understand it recently, and enjoy it even more recently. Being capable of being comfortable and having fun by yourself not only helps you in the alone times, but also the time you choose to spend with others. It means more if you’re hanging out with people because you want to, not just because you don’t like the idea of doing stuff by yourself.
• My policy of smiling at strangers is thus far a rousing success! When I left Hard Times, a woman in an Outback didn’t catch the yellow light and looked very flustered and upset, so as I crossed in front of her I shot her my best “life ain’t so bad” grin, and when I got a relieved smile in return, gave her a thumbs-up. She laughed. That felt good.
• 
  That has got to feel awesome. That’s got to be like Grant Park when Obama got elected times a billion. Now the hard work begins, and we can only hope Egypt’s new government will be worthy of this moment.
• Watching The Sopranos is a much better experience if you skip most of the scenes with Carmella and AJ.
• Getting Thai with Bets, Annie and Jess (whose lists-as-blog-posts schtick I ripped off. hi!) was great, and having it to look forward to really made my shift at work much more bearable. Gotta do that more often.
• Another blog recommendation. Coates writes about pretty much everything, but he’s at his best when he’s on about history, especially the culture of the Antebellum South. His take on the Civil War is absolutely fascinating.
• Got called in to work yesterday to cover a scheduling gap, closing tonight and tomorrow, then a regular shift Sunday morning, and then a full shift Monday. Workgirl better be enjoying her sister’s wedding, because I got ever so slightly fucked on this one, even if I am already spending the cash in my head.
• that’s probably enough for now.

New music spree!  Exciting stuff!

LCD Soundsystem – Yr City Is A Sucker (London Session)

For the past couple months I’ve been obsessed with LCD Soundsystem, to the point where about a week after being introduced I had already lost track of how many times I had run through the whole discography (alright, only 3 full albums, but still).  Appropriately, since everything I love apparently dies, This Is Happening is their last project.  Sadly, I can’t spare either the time or money it would take to go to their April 2nd farewell concert at Madison Square Garden, but the release of London Sessions this past month is actually a pretty good consolation. Sure, there’s no new material, but this collection is basically a greatest hits album that had sex with a live album and bore a thoroughly enjoyable, spontaneous, and above all, fun love child.  This version of “Yr City’s a Sucker” is what’s currently on repeat, but check out “Pow Pow”.  James Murphy and the whole band just sound like they’re having a fucking blast.  It really shows how despite Murphy’s perfectionist reputation in the studio, this is a band that needs to be seen live.  I wish I had been listening for years.

The Black Keys – Tighten Up

Last week I heard this on the radio, recognized that it HAD to be The Black Keys, then realized that I don’t own a single album other than Rubber Factory and hung my head in shame.  The video is great, too.  I especially like how the music cuts out when the first punch gets thrown.

Mumford & Sons – Roll Away Your Stone

There are no words.  Also, I have to go to class.

I can tell that we are gonna be friends

man, just bloggin’ up a storm lately.

Got a blog recommendation for y’all – Slacktivist.  They’re an Evangelical Christian that made me realize how wonderful evangelism can be in the hands of someone who is smart, intellectually curious, and, above all, sane.  They blog about all sorts of topics, ranging from random music to politics, but my favorite part is their literally page-by-page breakdown of the nutso Left Behind series, which tries to take Post-Millennial Dispensationalism (people who believe that the Book of Revalations is literal and prophetic and the Rapture is coming SOON) and turn it into a thriller.  Slacktivist has been taking a hatchet to the books for years now in an extraordinarily entertaining way, criticizing them both on a literary level (the writing is terrible) and a religious one (the interpretation of Christianity is worse)  Fantastic.

today was a good day