Posts (page 2)
A Dress A Day and Dictionary Evangelist
Dictionary editor Erin McKean gave a talk at eBay several months ago and I started reading her blogs immediately afterwards. I don't make dresses or know anything about dress patterns, but I do like her writing, and she does update regularly. Check out "The Secret Lives of Dresses" on her dressaday site. I read these every day.
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The Brothers Brick
This is a photo blog of LEGO MOCs (original creations). LEGO fans like acronyms, despite the fact that LEGO itself is not one. Worth checking up on.
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Bad Astronomy
Bad Astronomy is a great blog--when Phil is writing about Astronomy. He has a knack for finding and explaining beautiful pictures. I get at least one new desktop background a week from this site. He does spend a fair amount of time talking about politics and creationism, which puts a lot of readers off, and I'll admit that I skim or skip those posts. But there is a lot of great astronomy content here.
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Worse than Failure
The Daily WTF became "Worse than Failure" some time ago. It is an amusing read, but it is probably most amusing if you work in the software industry, and perhaps is not amusing at all if you have little or no exposure to programming. Still, there is a lot of WTF in bureaucracy, so a knowledge of Python is not necessary.
Title: The Elements of Typographic Style
Author: Robert Bringhurst
The story: Following the model set by Strunk and White in their Elements of Style, Bringhurst presents a series of dos and don'ts of typography, covering font selection, page layout, use of bold and italic fonts, numbering, running headers, and so on. There is an interlude for the history of typography, and the book ends with a selection of fonts of different types that he feels are worth looking at. Also covers Greek and Cyrillic alphabets, but has relatively little to say about fonts which cover, for instance, Chinese characters (no doubt a whole book could be written on that subject).
My take: I will admit that I am less interested in typography than the average owner of this book probably is--I do put a lot of text on the web, and I have some thoughts about that (a quick look at any of my writing [hey, there is a link over there <--] will show you that I use some css properties that many people ignore, increasing my line-height to give my characters a little more room to breathe), I am mostly an Elements junkie. Aside from the copy I was issued in college, I have a more recent edition, an illustrated, hardbound edition, and when I saw this, I was too tempted to pass it up. I read it cover to cover, and much of it was interesting.
Last thoughts: I was hoping that when I got to the list of noteworthy fonts I would find one that really appealed to me, but really the most attractive one to me, as they were layed out, was Futura, and I already knew I liked that one. I'm not sure what that says about me.
The Lord of the Rings is a book about hairy midgets by J.R.R. Tolkien, written, you know, just ages ago. The little guys are called "Hobbits," and they have some incredible adventures in a made up fantasy world called "Middle-earth."
The fun all starts when one old "hobbit," named Bilbo Baggins of all things, has a birthday party and puts on a magic ring that he stole from a nasty little midget called Gollum. The ring makes him disappear, to everyone's amazement, and he goes back home to plan one last adventure. Gandalf, a wizard, comes by and convinces him not to take the magic ring with him, because he thinks it is up to no good. So Bilbo leaves the ring in the care of his nephew, named Frodo (who told him these were good names? Maybe if your name is Jrr, you start to get crazy ideas about what names are good), and leaves Frodo in the care of the wizard, Gandalf. Gandalf later reveals to Frodo that the ring is no good™, and sends him on a quest to see some elves and determine what to do about it.
Frodo takes his best "hobbit" friends and goes on a journey that leads him through a scary forest and over rivers and hills, all the while pursued by evil ghost men who stab him, and manages to get to Rivendell (where the elves are) in time for their leader to heal his poisoned wound. Then he takes part in a council of men, elves, dwarves, and gandalfs, where they decide that the ring must be destroyed in order to defeat their great enemy, Sauron (I think this means "Lizard man"). There is much debate about who will carry the no good ring, but in the end, Frodo the "hobbit" volunteers. That very day he sets out with 8 other adventurers--three "hobbits", two men, one elf, one dwarf, one gandalf--to destroy the ring.
The fellowship comes to the land of some other elves, who give them presents and cornbread and boats, and then down the river to a fork in the road, where they have to decide where to go. One of the men decides he wants the power of the no good ring, and tries to take it from Frodo, and then everybody is attacked by orcs, and the group splits into two. Frodo and his gardener, Sam, go on to destroy the ring, and the rest of the party (except the bad man who is dead, and Gandalf who was killed by a whip monster) go on to the big kingdom of men in the south to prepare for war.
On the way to war, the big party meets Gangalf, who has come back from the dead even stronger than before (and in different clothes), and they fight another wizard, and they help some horsemen defeat a bunch of orcs, and they talk to trees. Then half of them go on to the war in the south while the remaining man in the party, who is secretly a descendant of kings, rounds up a bunch of ghosts to help protect the southern shores. Just in time, the king man gets to the battlefield with the ships he has won in battle, and the enemy is staved off. Then, in the wild hope that the ring will be destroyed in time, the party decides to mount a last desperate battle at the gates of the lizard man.
Meanwhile, Frodo and the other "hobbit" discover that they are being followed by the Gollum, and enlist him into their service as they attempt to get to the mountain where the no good ring was made. On the way they meet the brother of the bad man, and fight a giant spider, and spend a lot of time crossing terrible ruined lands, and Gollum betrays them and steals the ring for himself, but, well, it all works out in the end.
Finally, for some reason, there is a lot of genealogy in the book, dealing with the ancestors of the king man, and of dwarves, and a whole almanac of calendars and alphabets. This was my least favorite part of the book.
If you like to read about stuff that doesn't exist1, then you will probably like this book. There is some violence, but no sex. And considering every third person in the book is highly magical, there is very little magic. I'd say it is PG at worst, for its apocalyptic themes.
I understand that some movies were made about this, and that they were well received. Perhaps I will review them one day too.
1. See my review of "Harry Potter," a series of books about junior Gandalfs in school.
Title: The Tragic Treasury
Band: The Gothic Archies (see Stephin Merritt, The Magnetic Fields, the 6ths, Future Bible Heroes)
The story: Daniel Handler, who plays for the Magnetic Fields, is the author of the Series of Unfortunate Events books. Stephin Merritt recorded a bunch of original songs under the Gothic Archies brand for the audiobook versions, and this is the compilation.
My take: I haven't read the books, so I have no comment to make on how appropriate the songs are for the story, but i will say this: this is probably the best Magnetic Fields record in years. The arrangements sound much more like the main project than the earlier New Despair EP, so if you like the synthpop MF more than the I MF, you will probably like this. The lyrics are silly, but honestly, it doesn't detract much.
Last thoughts: It is weird to me to think that a Stephin Merritt record might be some little kid's favorite car CD. That kid has a strange life in store. Wait till he finds Holiday or Charm of the Highway Strip.
This year, former Pixies frontman Charles Thompson put out a solo record--not, as was the case in the past ten years, as Frank Black--as Black Francis. As such was he known in the Pixies, and the claim that was widely circulating was that it was a return to that style that prompted the name change. Fans of the Pixies have been waiting, primed, for a new Pixies record since the reunion was announced a few years ago, and no doubt this got their attention. I come at it from the other side, because I like the Pixies, but I really like the work released as Frank Black (+ and the Catholics, + and Teenage Fanclub). So I was a little wary, but after all, he had been working with Joey Santiago on his recent records, and the reformed Pixies played all of those shows, so perhaps he had recaptured the spirit of the Pixies after all.
But then, of course, the first track on Bluefinger is "Captain Pasty," which, honestly, sounds like a Catholics-era B-side. The lyrics are slightly more nonsensical than regular Frank Black, but the singing is pretty straightforward Show Me Your Tears, not much at all like Trompe Le Monde (the last Pixies release, the last legitimate Black Francis vocals). The second track "Threshold Apprehension" is at least halfway Pixies-esque, and maybe it was the inspiration for the name change, but then there is a track that sounds like a Stray Cats pastiche, and another vaguely Catholics-y song, before "Tight Black Rubber" again half sounds like something that you would be willing to call Black Francis. Four songs later, "You Can't Break a Heart and Have It" is almost hard enough to be a Black Francis song, and he tries his best to scream it out. But that's it: 3 songs out of 11 sound anything like what you would expect the record to sound like after the name change.
I'm not sure that's a fair assessment. The man certainly has the right to call himself whatever he wants, and why can't Black Francis in 2007 sound different from Black Francis in 1991? He has aged 16 years, after all. And Fast Man Raider Man, his last Frank Black release, really doesn't sound a damn thing like Teenager of the Year, the iconic Frank Black record. But there you have it. We were expecting a Pixies record.
Is the record terrible? Certainly not. Is it inspiring? I would say no also. Honeycomb is still the best of the recent crop. Dog In The Sand is incredible. Pistolero was strong before it. Teenager of the Year is a classic. Bluefinger is merely good.
An addendum here: if you follow the links over to last.fm, you will see that my profile is reporting this record as being by "Frank Black Francis," an oddity of last.fm's database that awaits correction. I assure you I have my records properly tagged.
This year, Okkervil River released a record called The Stage Names. I'm sure everybody has Black Sheep Boy already, and I know a lot of people went out and picked up records from the Okkervil back catalog after BSB came out, so I won't bother saying to much about the band itself here. My experience with them has been principally this: on every album there is a song that makes you say "THIS! Why couldn't the rest of the album have been like this!" So when I think about Okkervil River after the fact, I usually think of them as a band that isn't living up to their potential somehow, but that's not fair. I never complain when I listen to them.
A number of years ago, Jesus, 98 or 99, I guess, Jets to Brazil put out a record called Orange Rhyming Dictionary, which made its way around in my little musical circle, being loaned from person to person, with each person eventually going out and buying their own copy. That album has an incredible first three songs. Sometimes I think that's the best way to get people into a record: stack the best three songs at the top. If someone is amazed for three songs in a row, they will buy the record.
I'm making the comparison here, but I'm not going so far as to say this is another Orange Rhyming Dictionary, which is a kind of top 10 record, but I am pretty sure that if you get to a music store where this is on a listening station, and play the first three tracks, you will walk out with the record. If you have the ability to find songs on the internet to preview, that is "Our Life is Not a Movie Or Maybe," "Unless It's Kicks," and "A Hand To Take Hold of the Scene." For the record, after that is the beautiful but much lower-key "Savannah Smiles," which makes 4 very strong songs to open. My favorite of the record, though, is number 6, "A Girl In Port," although as with many of my favorite songs1 the lyrics probably don't bear printing out.
The last three tracks are the weakest in my opinion, though I'm sure there is someone that they appeal to. 8 reminds me of "I Can't Help Falling In Love With You" by Elvis Presley, or, for a small minority of you, UB-40. And 9, well, You will figure out what 9 reminds me of soon enough. So 6 good songs out of 9 (I know I didn't mention track 5, but it's good too), and in general, an album that is a worthy successor to Black Sheep Boy.
1. This does not apply to the Weakerthans (see my last review), who usually turn out songs that make absolute sense if you write them as prose. Try it sometime.
Out September 25th is Reunion Tour by the Weakerthans. In an email to my best friend and old bandmate Rick, I asked him if he was at all familiar with the Weakerthans (the rate at which we pass bands back and forth is unpredictable -- I gave him Okkervil River about three months after I got into them, but I couldn't recall a single discussion about the Weakerthans in the six years since I got Fallow as a birthday present from a conscientious girlfriend), to which he responded by sending me a bunch of mp3s from Reconstruction Site, before I timidly admitted that I was asking for his edification, not my own.
After listening to the record half a dozen times (enough, no doubt, to push them past MC Frontalot on my last.fm band roster for the #10 spot), I've come to this decision: it's not Fallow. If you are in the other camp, it's not Left and Leaving. But, like Reconstruction Site, it is a fantastic record. See if you don't like "Tournament of Hearts" and "Sun in an Empty Room." Fans of the last record's "Plea from a cat named Virtute" will be happy to see her return in "Virtute the Cat Explains Her Departure," and then sad when they get to the end of the title. Fans of hockey, I suppose, will enjoy the "Elegy for Gump Worsley," though I have to admit that it didn't particularly touch me.
I guess every band can be identified with one particular song--one you can put on and say "this is what they sound like"--for me, that song has been "Letter of Resignation" from Fallow. It is the ringtone now of the girl who gave me the record. I forgot to put my phone on vibrate on the way out the door, and it rang in my pocket today at work. To me, that is what the Weakerthans sound like. Chugging, muted barre chords, threatening to break out into pop-punk, but suddenly saved by a thin voice and a sweet melody and clever lyrics. There are a few songs on Reunion Tour that don't quite fit into that mold. The opening song, "Civil Twilight," begins with some rotary speaker effect that doesn't exist elsewhere in the Weakerthans catalog, before settling into a more traditional sound, and "Hymn of the Medical Oddity" (more hospitals and doctors) is pretty far from the "Letter" sound. Others, like "Tournament of Hearts," would fit on an earlier record seamlessly. "Night Windows," for some reason, sounds like Death Cab for Cutie to me.
This one doesn't really require much thought. If you like the Weakerthans, you will like this. If you're not sure, you should at least give it a try. If you don't like the Weakerthans, you may want to try another blog. There are just thousands and thousands of them now, and one of them is bound to be more to your liking.
Sorry I was away the whole month of September. At first I was on holiday, and then I was recovering from it (I took a lot of pictures of otters and jellyfish, and chinatown. If you know the way to my flickr, check them out). I have quite a few things to review for you in the next week or two, so stay tuned for reviews of: Reunion Tour from The Weakerthans, Bluefinger from Frank Black, DVDs of A Bit of Fry and Laurie, and a late, late, late review of a little book called Lord of the Rings, which is some kind of Dungeons and Dragons fanfic. Oh, and if I feel like branching out, I may review the new lens I used to take this picture, San Jose State's homecoming game against Idaho, and whatever my mother is making for dinner on Saturday night (assuming I keep that appointment).
Remember, October is review month!
John Swartzwelder is, as the cover of his books say, the author of 59 Simpsons episodes. He stopped writing for the Simpsons in 2004 and started writing these books (though he was back to write on the movie). I'm sure most people will find their way to these books from the high praise they get on the commentary tracks to the latest few Simpsons DVDs, as I did.
There is a piece of the commentary for season 10 where the staff says that John Swartzwelder can get them to keep anything in the script, no matter how ridiculous, by prefixing it with "for some reason" (a gunfight breaks out between the cowboys, for some reason, one starts digging a hole). I'd say something like 1/5th of the humor in these books comes from something similar--a little tag at the end of an otherwise cliché sentence.
Anyway, the books are short and not too expensive, so I'd say start with The Time Machine Did It and work your way up. He's writing about 1 a year, if you include the non Frank Burly Double Wonderful.
Singing duties belong to Rachel Warren, and a press blurb on their official site says "Rachel Warren's singing is simple and tonally pure, with the same mix of velvety sweetness and skyscraping grandeur that makes boys swoon for Jenny Lewis." Leaving aside for the moment my disagreement with the word "skyscraping," this review gives the wrong impression. "Velvety" I suppose must mean "like shouting, but quieter," and I suppose "skyscraping" means "sometimes just shouting." "Tonally pure" sounds like someone was trying to find a nice way to say "boring."
Now I feel like I've corrected too far. Her singing isn't bad, her voice just isn't very distinctive1. However, the rest of the band makes up for that. The arrangements are unusual but never jarring, and the songs are fun, sometimes catchy. The first six tracks are strong and varied, including the song "Our Haunt" included on the aforementioned Misra sampler, and "How to Beat Dementia." There is a fantastic little guitar line in the chorus of "Beats Beat Nothing," that should have been repeated another couple times, but that may be my fascination with echo. The weaker songs that occur here and there on the back half of the record aren't actually bad, they just aren't going to make any mixtapes. Stronger tracks on the back half include "Woah!" and the last song, "Alone."
So where does it fit on a scale that runs from OMC's How Bizzare to the Wrens The Meadowlands? Right about Speakerboxxx. It's a good album, but you can't help but think of The Love Below. Listen to it, enjoy it.
1. I can't help wondering at this point whether this criticism is unfounded. I like relatively few bands with female lead singers, and I am always comparing their singing to that of Kim Deal, which is unfair. There is only one other singer who sounds like Kim Deal, and that is Kelley Deal. When I hear some female singers I am tempted to say "she's trying too hard," or "who told her to sing like that?" and yet here I am criticizing a voice as "not very distinctive.
