December 2009
Seam /// “New Year’s” ///...
Slowdive /// “Machine Gun” ///...
Retribution Gospel Choir /// “White...
10 Most Overrated Films of the Decade
rebeccalando:
Little Miss Sunshine
Memento
Lost in Translation
Chicago
Any Japanese horror remake, especially The Ring
Pan’s Labyrinth
The Departed
Amelie (I really like it, but still.)
Juno (liked it, but seriously, relax.)
Lord of the Rings Trilogy (wake me up when it’s over)
No links because you already know what these movies are and what IMDb is.
How about underrated?
Frightened Rabbit /// “Swim Until You...
Ahead Of The Curve: A 2010 Futurespective →
A mixtape of some of the best music released in the year 2010:
1. Yeasayer /// “Madder Red”
2. Pyramiddd (formerly Starfucker) /// “Biggie Smalls”
3. Beach House /// “Walk In The Park”
4. Field Music /// “Them That Do Nothing”
5. Owen Pallett (aka Final Fantasy) /// “Keep The Dog Quiet”
6. Via Audio /// “Wanted”
7....
Fucked Up /// “I Don’t Wanna Be...
merlin:
Like 60s power pop? Me, too. So, see if...
Connecting The Dots
Regarding the last paragraph of this semi-polemic: I do in general tend to enjoy Don DeLillo’s “overwrought post-Marx consumerland setpieces” and do not wish to jump on the bandwagon of modern readers who tend to find him humorless and take his ironic philosophies for granted. I think because the decades since White Noise have yielded a much scarier, three-dimensional future,...
On 'Shoplifting From American Apparel'
Before anything, the best part
The best part of Shoplifting From American Apparel is a sentence on page 39. The protagonist, Sam, has been sentenced to two days of community service following an arrest for shoplifting from American Apparel:
A few weeks later Sam went to Tompkins Square Park around 8 a.m. and changed trash bags with a large group of people. Someone said one bag was “heavy as...
Field Music /// “Precious Plans” ///...
Remembrance Of Things Amassed
fek:
This talk will focus on the generation of memoir, using the author’s recent book, The Adderall Diaries, as a jumping off point for discussing the process of figuring out your story and editing it into something someone would want to read.
As opposed to The Adderall Diaries?
Admission is the price of the book ($23) and includes a copy.
Sigh. Guess not.
I’d like someone to spark a...
Fleeting Joys /// “The Breakup” ///...
Connecting The Dots
Apropos of these two earlier posts and Lacan’s “fictional direction,” I have to laugh about the Glenn Beck Gold Rush™. The man’s apocalyptic visions are completely incompatible with with the idea of gold’s lasting value! Gold, as a literally worthless substance made valuable only by psychotic consensus, is simply not going to help you in the charred aftermath of...
Disturbances, Doppelgängers, Body Snatchers
Fatefully enough, I happened to watch 1978’s Invasion Of The Body Snatchers not long after polishing off Rivka Galchen’s diabolical novel Atmospheric Disturbances last night: both take as their starting point the uncanny sense of a loved one being no longer that person, a literalized vision of the pain attendant in “growing apart.” Before either work posits its...
Connecting The Dots
Pretty surprised there doesn’t appear to be any Québec-based rapper going by the stage name “Monstreal,” or any plausible variant thereof.
In Which Pitchfork Writes Its Top 100 Songs List... →
Meanwhile, my math:
Grizzly Bear “While You Wait For The Others” > “Two Weeks”
Animal Collective “What Would I Want? Sky” > “My Girls”
Neon Indian “Should Have Taken Acid With You” > “Deadbeat Summer”
Phoenix “Lisztomania” > “1901”
Yeah Yeah Yeahs “Heads Will Roll” >...
Ten Favorite Books Of The Decade
10. The Family That Couldn’t Sleep /// D.T. Max
9. The Areas Of My Expertise /// John Hodgman
8. Cloud Atlas /// David Mitchell
7. The Last Novel /// David Markson
6. Like You’d Understand, Anyway /// Jim Shepard
5. The Rest Is Noise: Listening To The Twentieth Century /// Alex Ross
4. 2666 /// Roberto Bolaño
3. Dangerous Laughter /// Steven Millhauser
2....
Top 50 Albums Of 2009 (10-1)
1. Clubroot /// Clubroot
Before you hurl accusations of mere contrarianism or ask why you haven’t heard anything about it, let me assure you: this album is the greatest fucking thing ever. It’s dubstep. It cuts deep. It is a staggering meditation on loneliness and psychic downspirals. It is composed primarily of ice and wind. It has no words save a decontexualized sample from the...
Connecting The Dots
One last word on Yeasayer: Someone on Hipinion made the slam-dunk call that these guys are a twenty-first century Tears For Fears. Meanwhile, Odd Blood opening track “The Children” uses the same vocal warp The Knife are so fond of. I write these two sentences in succession that we may begin to understand how dizzying even the once relatively narrow Middle-East-via-Brooklyn soul-psych...
1 tag
Rejection
Hi Miles, Thanks for sending us another story, and sorry that this response is so late in coming. ”Yellow Christ” certainly has that highbrow taint, and you’ve painted it poetically indeed. I don’t think it’s quite right for the site and our readers, though I appreciate the chance to look at it. You’re [sic] stories can take some hard work but you often turn a mean...
Yeasayer /// “Madder Red” /// Odd...
Chicklit?
adambozarth:
healywu:
nicolemarietherese:
A book set in a campus radio station at a women’s college where all the DJs are witches…that’s probably going to veer pretty close to chicklit, isn’t it? Miles, can you weigh in as the saddest young literary man I know?
I am not positive, but I don’t think it’s chicklit unless someone gets proposed to, or is working towards their potentially...
tumbledore:
Young Governor /// “English Tim”
...
New Jersey Ain't The Whole World
agrammar:
In a reality TV world, no place is deemed more real than New Jersey. Whether it’s “The Real Housewives of New Jersey” or “Jersey Shore,” the fictional mob reality of “The Sopranos” or the real-folks rock of Bruce Springsteen, if you want real reality, not silly poseurs sneaking into the White House, there’s no better place to find it than New Jersey.
From the New York Times. This...
Top 50 Albums Of 2009 (20-11)
11. Yeah Yeah Yeahs /// It’s Blitz!
Fact: If there’s a better compilation of futuristic club jams, dirges for lost youth and ceiling-peeling balladry, it was not released on this planet in this year of our alternative and still-towering goddess Karen O. two thousand and nine.
12. Bear In Heaven /// Beast Rest Forth Mouth
I’d like Bear In Heaven to host a reality show called So You...
Top 50 Albums Of 2009 (30-21)
21. Dinosaur Jr. /// Farm
A triumph of mutual hatred: archenemies J Mascis and Lou Barlow reunite in front of whoever their drummer is (kidding, no hardcore hate mail please) to become the blistering power trio you thought was dead forever. Now go ahead drown in their grungy pathos.
22. Black Moth Super Rainbow /// Eating Us
Less wheezy and a bit beefier in the beat department, Pennsylvania...
David Foster Wallace vs. Kurt Vonnegut
brianmlatimer:
printedandbound:
Kurt Vonnegut, writing in response to Jonathan Franzen’s April Folio on American novelists, “Perchance to Dream,” claims that “Novelists are people who believe they can dampen their neuroses by writing make-believe. We will keep on doing that no matter what, while offering loftier explanations.” This makes Vonnegut look humble and lovable, but as a response to...
Top 50 Albums of 2009 (40-31)
31. Pomegranates...
[¡¡¡Too insidery!!!]
youngmanhattanite:
skybarn:
televisionarie:
Jesus Christ, sometimes the insane circle jerkiness of Tumblr just makes me want to hack into someone’s account and scream “There’s more to life than this! Like Golden Girls reruns and Thai food and buying fucking Uggs when you swore you never would!”
And please, please stop talking about how obnoxious other people’s “entitlement” is if you have...
Shoe, Meet Other Foot
Two blow-by-blow reviews of Birkensnake #2 are now out (along with this big-picture affair), and that means two people were forced to read a story of mine (“Dogfight”) with the intention of putting together a brief gloss or blurb on it.
I am pleased to announce that my fiction has so far proved divisive, meaning I’m one transgression away from the coveted descriptor...
Top 50 Albums Of 2009 (50-41)
41....
Connecting The Dots
Frustration of being a narcissistic music blogger: I was struggling with the genre taxonomy of a band for two weeks, finally came up with the laughable solution (“power-folk”), and promptly realized I’d forgotten what band this was supposed to describe.
