Oct30 20:18
Question of the Week
No Comments
The question of the week is: why was there a tire iron in my yard this afternoon when I went outside to bring the trash cans in?
I’m open to answers.
Monthly Archives:
Archive for October 2006
Oct30 00:56
Considering how rotten I’ve felt all weekend, I’m surprisingly euphoric tonight (actually, earlier, I think my blood sugar was low and I got that whole “I’m watching myself from the third person” thing. So I was literally euphoric. I hate that “euphoria” gets used to mean “really happy” in English (Hell, I do it). The word means to be beside oneself and has all kinds of weird implications within psychedelics. Anyway, digression over). Thursday was truly surreal, which would appear to be appropriate, as my Thursday seminar was taught by a professor of Surrealism. We were discussing the Marquis De Sade and were supposed to be meeting at a bar for an evening class (explaining involves a long story that ultimately doesn’t matter). When I arrived at the bar, I discovered that we had, instead, been moved into the fancy dining room of the Nitanny Lion Inn (probably the #2 restaurant in State College, PA. More importantly, though, it is the classiest). So, we sit down over pitchers of beer in a (thankfully) sparsely seated dining room and begin our discussion of sodomy and sexual violence in Philosophy in the Bedroom. Needless to say it was very, very weird. Especially when the little Chinese girl ran into the room and started waving at everyone. After class, I drank whiskey with a friend in seminar until I couldn’t see. I woke up the next morning in my clothes, with the light on in my room and twenty minutes to get to class.
Getting out of bed was a challenge. I half-showered and ran to class (I probably wouldn’t have shown up, excepting the fact that I had to give a twenty minute presentation on Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition. Surprisingly, that went really, really well. I seem to actually present better hungover than sober. Although, I don’t want to test that hypothesis.) Anyway, I left class and got ready to go to Philadelphia, where I was going to see the Wrens.
Continue Reading »
Oct18 19:07
There seems to be a trend, ever since the conversion to digital media, towards really excessive packaging of cultural artifacts. I could list a lot of examples, but I suppose the most excessive has got to be The Fun House Sessions, a box set that recreates every single note put to tape by the Stooges during the recording of Fun House. It’s six CDs of outtakes. Frankly, and despite its status as “classic,” I have trouble listening to the final product. That’s beside the point, though. The point is that I almost bought the set when it came out. “Why?” you might ask. That would be a valid question. I find my self attracted to excessive media sets like this. The object that, currently, sparked this discussion is the copy of Dust Devil: Final Cut that arrived in my mailbox today.
For the record, I’ve never seen Dust Devil. Yet I was willing to shell out $30 to get a limited edition, five (5!) disc boxed set that includes the movie, a rough cut of the movie, the soundtrack to the movie, and three short subject documentaries by Richard Stanley. For the record, I really liked Stanley’s other movie (Hardware), but … I don’t know. The same thing happened with the Suspiria set (although, that is now one of my all time favorite movies (and the bonus features are pretty groovy)). Nonetheless, the problem gets more worrisome with things I don’t even want, like the aforementioned Stooges set or Screamin’ and Hollerin’ the Blues (I don’t even like Charlie Patton). Do you think it could be some sort of obsession with plenitude that marks my desire for these overly completest sets? Or is it because I want to be a part of a community of obsessives that can care that desperately about something?
Continue Reading »
Oct11 14:21
I’m really excited, I must admit. I just talked Dr. Paul Youngquist into giving a seminar on science fiction(s) next year! This is very exciting for me. I’ve been sick, for too long, of having to play catch-up with my peers who specialize in things that are taught in “the academy” (modernism, Milton, etc.) or standing as the token science fiction scholar and having to answer facial questions about SF (as Paul mentioned, “now you know what it feels like to be black” (which I don’t want to touch with a ten foot pole)). So, this is big and exciting news. I also found out he’s writing a book on SF at the moment. It’s nice to talk to people about Delany and Burroughs and have them be able to cogently respond about the fictions themselves and not just nod and say things like “He wrote Naked Lunch, right? That’s a novel about heroin, right?”
The problem, now, though is that I have to find a way to convince around five people to take this class. I think I can get my roommate, Dan, interested and possibly a few other people who enjoy the “Paul Youngquist Show” in seminar. Anyway, so now that I’m all excited about taking a literature seminar next year, I’m going to go back to Paul de Man talking pedagogy and hopefully staying awake.
Continue Reading »
Oct04 20:19
I’m watching America’s Next Top Model at the moment (it’s great, btw (shut up and die if you disagree with me)). An ad for Marie Antoinette on DVD came on the TV. It’s the same sort of ad they used to get people to see it in theatres: French aristocrats running around accompanied by the Joy Division song, “Ceremony.” The narrator for the ad says something like “Beyond the history, beyond the gossip, beyond what you think you know … is the secret truth.” All I could think is that the secret must be “MARIE ANTOINETTE IS A JOY DIVISION FAN!!!!”
I am a total nerd.
Continue Reading »
Oct03 12:41
I was thinking, this morning, about how different “classic rock” is from the stuff that seems to pass for rock expression these days. Where you used to have kids listening to bands like Aerosmith and Thin Lizzy and thinking about how cool it was going to be when one was grown up and driving a muscle car out of dead end town (and I’m basing most of this statement on Dazed and Confused), nowadays, it seems a lot of what passes for “rock” doesn’t really rock anymore. I’m talking about those generic “punk” bands that sing about girls breaking up with them and stuff, as though the territory of “sex, drugs, and rock & roll!” has collapsed into “high school forever!” What I guess I’m saying is that there used to be rock music for adults. Or, at least, about adults. Or kids grappling with being adults (which is why “Born To Run” is probably the greatest rock album of all time).
Anyway, this whole debate was prompted by the new album by the Hold Steady, The Boys and Girls In America. The Hold Steady tells stories about losers and drop-outs and druggies amongst suburban wastelands and the bored professionals of the urban core. While it may not be about muscle cars, its definitely about sex and drugs. It feels grown up. Not so much “I’m so sad that you’re gone and I wish you would look at me” (the position articulated by pop-emo) as “You know what, you were a mess and I’m sort of glad that you’re gone.” It’s an album of stories that are thematically unified without being the same thing over and over. Further, it pays musically homage to a range of influences that include perpetually uncool bands such as Thin Lizzy, Bruce Springsteen, and Journey. That isn’t to say that any of those bands are uncool (although, were it not for “Don’t Stop Believing,” Journey would be 100% cheesey), but in an indie culture that seems to suggest that a response to Belle & Sebastian is the only way to “rock” (Hell, even Belle & Sebastian is responding to Belle & Sebastian these days) and a mainstream that inscribes an adolescent perspective as the way to rock, it’s unusual to see the Hold Steady do something that is different (although, not completely: the Hold Steady come off as a less DIY Ted Leo)by articulating a classic rock sound that sings about the condition of adults today.
Continue Reading »
Oct02 22:06
My roommate Dan stopped me today in the hall with the question, “did we talk about going to New York City for Fall break?”
To which I responded, like any sleep deprived grad student, “No, I don’t think so. Why?”
