Your Eyes are Kansas City

Trips in July

2009-07-18T21:51:49Z

On the fourth of July, I was in the Florida Keys. That's me there, after fishing for three hours in 95 degree heat and considerable humidity. It turned out that the whole point of the trip to the Keys was fishing, though at the time Katie and I w...

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Memorial Day Weekend

2009-05-29T23:48:12Z

On Saturday, I took Katie and her mother Cary up to San Francisco. Cary was dying to see Lombard Street, and I had never driven it before. So we waited in line with all the other tourists and drove down the street, and then got out at the bottom ...

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The Stand Ins

2008-09-19T17:30:09Z

So I guess it is a thing now to record a bunch of extra songs when you go in to make your album, knowing full well that you're going to make the crappy songs into a follow on album? Is that a thing? Sufjan Stevens is doing it, and now Okkervil Ri...

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Mountain Battles

2008-04-25T20:25:22Z

Continuing the "ex-Pixies members releasing a record in April" theme, The Breeders dropped Mountain Battles three weeks ago. If you haven't been following the Breeders (maybe you don't even remember "Cannonball"), I will recap for you here: Pod -...

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Seven Fingers

2008-04-23T21:35:23Z

New this month from former Pixies frontman Charles Thomas is Seven Fingers... unless it's Svn Fngrs. It might be either. Also, you'll note that I didn't refer to this as a Black Francis record. It is, but at this point I'm so confused about what ...

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Distortion

2008-02-04T18:43:19Z

2008 Begins with a bang, as the Magnetic Fields release their latest full length album, Distortion. The sound is different, the sound is heavier, but the songs are fantastic. Sure, my friend and former lead singer Rick says he likes the record be...

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Quickly: Jenn Grant

2008-01-08T21:44:35Z

What: Jenn Grant's Orchestra For The Moon How I found it: I saw a snatch of her song "Dreamer" on a documentary about the Weakerthans. Why You Should Care: "Make It Home Tonight" is a perfect Jason Molina song... by someone else. Honestly, you wi...

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From the HK Collection: from Beijing With Love

2007-12-04T22:37:22Z

Last week I dusted off Stephen Chow's secret agent parody, From Beijing With Love. It isn't new, and it isn't well known, but hey, that's what the Hong Kong collection is for--stuff you just don't have. Stephen Chow is best known here for Shaoli...

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Beowulf by Seamus Heaney

2007-11-14T00:01:16Z

Beowulf is an epic poem about a great Scandinavian hero, written in Anglo-Saxon (or Old English), over a thousand years ago in England. This translation, by Seamus Heaney, is pretty new and has been very well received. Some notes on the story fi...

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Novels in Three Lines

2007-11-07T21:17:17Z

I was oh so tempted to write this in three lines. I think I have a fixed layout here and everything, so it makes sense. It would have ended up something like: Novels in Three Lines, given as a birthday present, was read in two days by Judah Nie...

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