The Publishing Odyssey Continues to Continue...

So I've decided that this fall will be the optimum time for a renewed campaign to get my book published, and to get published in general.

Unfortunately I've had a hard time mustering up the energy.

I've detailed some of my recent failures and frustrations here in the back pages of this blog. Past efforts to get published have involved perhaps even more work, with even fewer results.

In 2002, for instance, I shopped a recently-completed manuscript (a meticulously-researched but somewhat unevenly-written crime thriller set in 1950s Las Vegas) to perhaps 40 literary agencies via blind snail-mailed queries, and I was rewarded for my efforts with a seemingly endless trickle of slender self-addressed stamped envelopes that arrived back in my mailbox, bearing type-written form letters indicating that my manuscript didn't fit someone's needs. (This is, perhaps, one of the crueller things about blindly shopping a manuscript; your rejections arrive in envelopes COVERED IN YOUR OWN HANDWRITING. It's like your tormentors are too lazy to inflict all that psychic damage on you themselves, so they've cunningly decided to use your own hand against you, like those schoolyard bullies who would grab your arm and use it to slap you in the face, telling you all the while: "Stop hitting yourself!") At first I was a little naive about the process, to the point where I was actually a little excited to see a letter bearing the return address of a literary agency, but I always at least knew something wasn't right when I'd pick up the envelope and feel the lightness of its single-page content. "Hmmm," I remember thinking. "Seems a little light for a contract..."

This, plus my frustrating recent efforts, have left me a little despondent. So I've queried exactly one legitimate publisher this season (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, if you must know) and a couple poetry reviews. Bateau Press has already sent some rejection emails, which is actually fine because I thought they were kind of pretentious anyway; I've also queried the Columbia Poetry Review. (This is perhaps most freighted with karmic potential; I earned a Master's from Columbia University, good ol' Ivy League Columbia in New York, with all the Pulitzers and what-not, but later found myself living near Columbia College in Chicago and making friends with many of its students, so when I'd hit the bars and tell people where I'd gone to grad school, I'd say "ColumbiaUniversityinNewYork" practically in one breath, lest they think even for a fraction of a second that I'd gone to the other Columbia. So either Columbia College will graciously publish my poetry and leave me eternally grateful and incapable of speaking ill or thinking condescendingly of them, or they will laugh manaically and burn my submissions while dancing around and saying, "Who's the good Columbia now, bitch?")

ANYWAY, this "publishing campaign" of mine has been somewhat lazy, the Anzio of publishing campaigns, perhaps. (Churchill said of Anzio: "I expected to see a wildcat roaring into the mountains - and what do I find? A whale wallowing on the beaches!") I became particularly despondent this week when looking at websites from one of the major agencies—William Morris or ICM, maybe—and seeing that they did not even look at unsolicited materials. It used to be that you had to get an agent because they were your "in" to find a publisher; now you need an "in" to get an agent. (The despairing, melodramatic side of me tells me I'll be a literary Van Gogh, unappreciated in my own lifetime. Then I realize I take myself way too seriously, and that Bateau Press has nothing on me in the pretension department.)

On the plus side, my scrappy friends and I have been publishing and distributing a little independent literary newspaper called The Deadline. (No website, but you can pick up your own copies at Chicago's hipper coffeeshops, or submit online at thedeadlinechicago@gmail.com if you're so inclined.) The Deadline is the brainchild of my friend Liz, and she's put an inspiring amount of energy into it over the past nine months. (While I'm not entirely nuts about the fact that we have no online presence, I'm grateful enough for Liz's hard work and leadership that I'm not really complaining; she's the type of leader whose dedication makes everyone around her want to work harder, myself included, and that's a lot more valuable than whether or not we agree on every little thing.) We have a launch party up in Logan Square on the first Wednesday of every month, and we all get a manila envelope or two with a list of local coffeeshops in a particular neighborhood where we need to distribute our copies. I've taken to doing this by bicycle, so I kinda feel like a kid with a paper route, which would be great, except for the fact that I'll be 33 in a couple weeks. Jesus had started a major religion by this age, and here I am rolling off like Don Quixote on a fixie, attacking the windmills of literary pretension and insularity, 100 Kinkos-printed copies at a time.

Still, it beats the shit out of rejection letters!

Work Haiku

Sun-hot boiler room
Salespeople babble on phones
Blasting out cold calls

Here I clean records
While chaos seeps through headphones
Jangly Sebadoh

For seven long years
I've worked in telecom but
Can't transfer a call

In my database
I find an "Unknown, Jesus"
Works for Bulk TV

Our office empties
And bright falling orange sun
Turns El trains silver

Handprints

I remember tracing photos in picturebooks
With pens as a young boy
Straining to capture the beauty in images
That had brought me so much joy
And destroying them in the process
Obscuring them with scribbled ink lines
I’d then run and complain to my mother
Who’d patiently listen to my whines
“If you mark something up, you have to live with it,”
She’d gently and calmly say
“Take care of the things you love
The marks won’t go away.”
I had to relearn this lesson with other things
Model planes and favorite magazines
I’d hold on to these things too tightly
And leave handprints on them
                                             It seems
To love is to hold on lightly
Grabbing tightly comes from fear
That your happiness comes from that thing alone
You’ll destroy what you hold dear
Though also these things can leave marks on you
Like newsprint or PB&J fingers
Or patches of white plastic airplane glue
These soft reminders linger
So, too, do the scars left behind
By sharp things you didn’t want lost
Those marks don’t leave your body
The small but permanent cost
Of grabbing on far too tightly
And wrapping your hands around
Things that you don’t need that badly
These lessons are hard, I’ve found
I’ve spent much of my time re-learning them
With the trappings of an adult’s life
Like booze, and fair-weather friends
And a one-time future wife
I left handprints on her once
I’ll admit, though I’m not proud to say
Take care of the things you love
The marks won’t go away

It seems like this poem should end now
But handprints aren’t all of the story
In dreams and forgetting God heals
The Master creates all things, His glory
Is in the wholeness and fullness of life
We grab on to parts and forget
That they alone can’t satisfy
We moan their loss, and yet
We also grasp lightly, it’s true
With pictures and photographs, all art
Is an attempt to capture in a bottle
Images that have stirred our heart
Sun slanting across rusted rivets
Or shimmering through water on lake sand
Are we not children tracing images
That were made by the Master’s hand?

Love and Vomit and Other Sickening Things...

So my friend's friend posted some art online from a gallery show of some sort, and I think it's actually pretty cool. (Plus I'm kinda lazy and want to post new things while not, you know, creating content.) So check out this link here for now, and I will try to kick it up a notch on my end.

The Publishing Odyssey Continues...

As the six of you who are following this blog may already know, I've been shopping a book manuscript for some time now. (Actually, it's not so much a manuscript as a magnum opus--the culmination of all my hopes and dreams and...well, you get the picture.)

Anyway, for a period of a couple months last year, I thought I'd finally arrived in the Promised Land--representation by a reputable agency. (Translation: An agency in New York, but not in a bad part of New York, and not in a broom closet; it's also important that they've actually worked with authors I've heard of BEFORE I did any research on the agency.)

Now that I've had no communication from them in over six months, I'm beginning to suspect that things aren't quite as good as I'd hoped, and that I may actually not have reliable representation. (Granted, I've heard that most of the publishing industry takes the whole summer off, and a sizeable Spring Break, and Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year's and all major Jewish holidays, so they may not have been ignoring me that whole time.) In fact, the situation's a wee bit depressing; I'm not quite suicidal, but I am kind of inclined to hole up in the coffee shops for another winter, hunched over my laptop like a cyber-age Gollum, polishing and polishing my manuscript and muttering "My Precious" over and over.

But I kinda need to, you know, get it out there. Summer is over, and Yom Kippur soon will be. Let the 2010 book shopping season commence!

DVD Factory

My head’s a DVD factory
Filling up with rejects
Manufacturing defects
Shitty dialogue and looping scenes
Of freak sex pretexts
“We’re girls and friends, that’s awesome!
I say we have a threesome.”
It’s fearsome, I’m dejected
Unexpectedly
By this neverending dance
The flutter in my heart
And the aching in my pants
No romance, I just want the bed
To re-enact bad porn
Being filmed in my head
That’s falling from the conveyor belt
To the factory floor
Gotta grab these discs before
They roll out my mouth
The open door
Into sunlight
No one can see them
I shouldn’t free them
On an unsuspecting public
Or do casting calls
With friends, I don’t have the balls
Anyway, I should scratch these movies up instead
Keep them in the dark
But there I might just want to watch them first
Set up a projector in my skull
Grab a popcorn, pop a Red Bull
Set up an editing console
Behind my tonsils
I’ll make this shit come out right somehow.

Pimpmobile

I’m waitin’ for you at the Greyhound Station
In my pimpmobile
Rims of polished steel, Neil
I stand tall while you crawl
On all fours
Pickin’ up quarters stuck to the floor
While I toss bills down from the sky
Riding high, my car’s a boat
You’re swigging Popov
Plastic bottle in your trenchcoat
Top off all the time
Digging through lint in my bench seat
Tryin’ to find another dime
Still here we are, coming from different places to the same destination
Inebriation, sedation
Prowling the bars for copulation
Living to fill the void
A living hell, trying to avoid
What is real
What is real?
What I see or what I feel?
I feel like a chump, not a pimp
Drinking in dumps every week
Waiting for your broke ass like a trained chimp
No cash in your bank, no gas in your tank
Plus your phone ain’t got no minutes
I’ll make you do your penance
In shots, fuck you up
But never let you down, clown
I can’t leave you here, I need you near
By my side
Or I can’t hide
My bad habits
Plus you’d have to catch a cab, it’s
Sad, you said there’ll be chicks that fuck like rabbits
There, and I need you to be yourself, a dick
The stick to my carrot
So it’ll be less apparent
How dull I am
I need you here in the passenger seat
With an aura of defeat
You think I’m a friend?
I just need you to defend
Me from my own head
So I don’t beat my ass up with it
Thinking I’m the only one who does this
If I end up home alone in bed
Tomorrow, tomorrow never comes
I don’t wanna look like one of the bums
But I don’t have to if I’ve got you
I’m a fighter, you’re a fool
My bling looks brighter next to you
I won’t tell you none of this
Just greet you with a bumped fist
Still if I did, you’d be glad
I’m talking about you, good or bad
But no you won’t know it
I won’t show it to you
Owe you another brew
I’ll just hold you in contempt of the courtroom in my head
A small venue
Only room enough for one
Unlike this car
Hey, man, there you are
It’s good to see you brother

Another Alaska Photo

Cinnamon Gum

Farewell, my little temptress
I’m through trying to impress you
I think
I think I think too much
I’m depressed and distressed
And though I kind of miss you
We have issues we can’t resolve
That won’t dissolve in a glass of whisky
Just hanging out feels risky
I feel frisky all the same
Is it you or me to blame?
Am I too lazy to look beyond you?
We’re too crazy to be Beyonce and Jay-Z
And too white
Can’t fight that
Or talk it through on facebook chat
Two hipsters throwing out the welcome mat
For each other’s demons
Seeming innocuous while probing for defects
I don’t need a pretext
To do the wrong thing
I can write that song, sing it solo
Can you tell me what we shared, though?
A day on the indie rock scene
What’s it mean?
Summer breezes
Sunlight shining through the trees
But Jesus, it was gray as hell
Like you said, I can’t dispel that notion
Feeling swell but riding swells of emotion
Up and down like the ocean
Did we get high or low looking through each other’s eyes
To the twisted souls inside?
I’m dismayed you can’t hide that better from me
Just like I despise the lies
I tell myself about you
Did we want to be together or just circle like dancers
Looking for answers about the cancers
Eating away at us?
Compatible diseases?
Who knows? I don’t know why
You freeze when we say goodbye
Or maybe I do
I didn’t know that was what it was for sure, I think
But I think I had a clue
When time passed slow
With no text from you
Did you just want a companion for a dark road trip?
Slip off into oblivion together?
Or did you just want someone to hang out with
And bag upon the hipsters?
Hope stirs in my breast when I think this
With no reason, maybe pride
Maybe you wanted to hide
Or thought I was taking you for a ride
Still I feel denied
For the end was what it was
Sun setting, time for Pavement
Heart sinking like cement
Alone in my own Terror Twilight
Another night that turned out wrong
Though I don’t know what would have been right
I should have known it all along
I’m still checking the phone to see if you’ve rung
The tang of your cinnamon gum
Fading on my tongue
Who knows what it meant?
All this flavor with no nourishment
But it shows that I forget
The one thing I can say with precision
Swallow you or spit you out
Is not just a girl’s decision

The Incredible Mr. Limpet

I wanna be the Spock of cock
Wait, that’s sick, maybe just the Rock
Wait, no, that’s corny
But I’m horny
I’m sulkin’ in the corner
But I wanna be a Vulcan
And mind meld with you
At least, turn you into goo
While I stay inscrutable
But no, I can’t pimp it
In space
When I’m the Incredible Mr. Limpet
A nerdy cartoon fish
Swimming in Fanta seas
Sweet and bookish
And somehow
A hero now, wow
You’re too young to get this reference
My partner in crime
Still this rhyme should get me deference
Even if I’m not your preference
Spend some time underwater with me
My heart’s been hurled from space into that void alone
Too many times
It’s unfit for both worlds
Weak as flesh
Heavy as wet sand
It’ll pull me down but not to a cartoon land
No, pure reality, death by my own ha…
Holy shit, what’s wrong with me?
Too much thinkin’ on my fantasies
And my troubles
You shouldn’t be here blowing bubbles
While I’m locked in morbidity
It isn’t that bad to be sad
Or to be Don Knotts
Instead of fighting Nazis
It’s scary, I can not see
Why the fantasy
Is necessary
Or the science fiction
I need to learn to live with friction
In my life
And no wife
I can’t live in space or under water

Haha! Silly Hipsters.

So I have a Pitchfork-related poem I'm hoping to post soon, but Terra Dankowski over at Graph Factory has apparently done me one better with this. Check out her blog. It's pretty cool.

Doctor Shopper

Doctor shopper

Pill popper

Copper coins can’t change their mind like you

I don’t care whether or not you’re vain

You’re a weathervane

Blameless

Hot and aimless

360°, pennies are one in two

A certainty next to you

Tonight I don’t want a piece of tail

Or even a little head

But a warm body’s always nice in bed

It’s been like ice

But no tranquility’s here

The evil has landed

A sick relationship is what I’ve been handed

And what I’ve demanded

Physician, medicate thyself

Just not from the top shelf

Who am I kidding? I’m an ambulance chaser

Following desperate sirens, flashing lights

In my white Chevy Blazer

Ignoring traffic signals

Healthy singles

Relationship ease

Do I have your disease?

At night I’m on my knees

To God, but when morning comes I bow

To you, it’s over now

You’re not

A poker pot

You’re a player who folded my blankets

When I holded on line 3

Who popped pills in the bathroom while I waited for fun

I heard that rattle, baby

It said we’re done

So maybe I’ve won

At any rate I still have the shirt on my back

And the sun

And I’m out of the fray

So it’s hurt that I lack

I’m a doc on holiday

And a patient

Too, I should have patience

And keep your secrets



But that makes for shitty poems.

Urban Goldfish

Stencil Art

Stencil art is kind of a tricky medium, ethically; on one hand, it's illegal, but on the other hand, it's often a lot more beautiful than many things that are, in fact, legal. (And most of us--anyone who's ever driven over 65--have kind of decided on our own how much illegality is acceptable to us.) Anyway, there's some good stuff up here. 

Gasoline Rainbow

What is it that I fear

Falling asleep or waking up?

Drop a coin into my cup

And I’ll tell you what you want to hear

I beg you

And I’ll bless you and thank you

And let you tell me what to do

You seem to know more than I do

What do you know? My leg’s swollen in this dirty tennis shoe

Skin like a drum, tight

So maybe I want the night

Falling from a great height to a great sleep might

Hurt more than this, but only for an instant

Then…bliss?

Who knows, first

Bones will crack, vessels burst

Blood spread across the sidewalk

I see it in the worst way

Too clearly, replay it too frequently

Maybe I gotta do it just to stop the imagery

How come I don’t? Is it too hard or am I just cowardly?

Still sleep itself seems easy

Actions without consequences

In my dreams, nonsensical

And I can leave the theater

And talk about these movies to people who’ll never see them

But are they only entertaining

When I’m explaining them to you

On a new morning

Under the awning

Outside the White Hen when it’s raining?

I say I can’t complain but I’m complaining

I want these dreams all year long, not just summer

When I slumber on an island of grass

With taxis and cops circling like sharks, they don’t stop

Just go elsewhere so I can relax and not react

Unlike winter when night’s like day

Bright and angry on the CTA

Pockets picked near vomit smell

In that rocking fluorescent motel

Electric hell

But the summer nights are easy

Black like me, and blue and cool too

A sleazy pleasant lover

While day’s always a nagging wife

Unfortunately not an option unless I opt for endless night

To escape that demanding bitch I used to auction off my time to her

So I could afford to spend it all on the other

Until she took over

Was that my choice?

Still I didn’t mind

I might have decided not to fight

But I thought there were no consequences

To night, just dreams, and spills to clean up with repentences

Still, escapes from our life sentences

With the eternal wife, our ball and chain

Old dull routine

Clanging alarms and cramped commutes

Working for bosses with golden parachutes

While my only options were worthless

Somewhere between toilet paper and vapor

I needed a few toots to escape, or…

What? That’s all it was, a different road

Than the one you took to the bar

Dirty rocks or maybe black tar

Which made me feel far from harm

At last, safe in a warm hug, a liquid blanket

So snug it fit inside me

Nod out, or take the other which would shake me up

Or powder my nose to wake me up

A white drug, but I liked it sometimes, I could make me up

Like I was Superman

Or later just Clark Kent

When I felt bent

Out of shape, from partying away the rent

I could at least transform into a normal human being

A superhero feat I can’t pull off now

Without at least a cheap disguise

Hat or sunglasses to cover my eyes

(Bloodshot or dilated or in between highs)

And hide the lies I tell to you to escape the lows

Still everybody knows

But you, or do you, too?

What does it matter

If I get a fatter

Wad of bills to pay the boss

You can treat me with utter contempt

Just don’t tempt me

Into acting the fool, when you butter

My bread I can’t afford that

I’ll give you more of that wicked flow

I’m a gasoline rainbow

Drifting past you in the gutter

Lazy, slow

I don’t know

What I done wrote

Is it a poem or a suicide note?

Who knows?

These flows

Are the only

Way out of my lonely

(Unless no one’s really listening

And I’m howling into the void

Annoyed

As I drift towards that gaping hole

Do you feel me? How can you, you’re employed

Still maybe you fear the night, too)

But do I want a new day

Or a way out of this fear?

Who can say

Drop a coin into my cup

And I’ll tell you what you want to hear

Think You Know Why You Vote? Think Again.

One thing that's been increasingly apparent as I've grown older is that most adults are really, really, really reluctant to change their minds. We tend to hold on to (or throw out) facts depending on how well they fit in with our existing belief systems. And this article--which, granted, is a little long on argument in the early pages--analyzes the phenomenon with far more depth than I can hope to muster.

Mother's Day

It was Mother’s Day Sunday

You’ll call her up one day

And say you’re here with the blacks and Caucasians

18 years old

Trying to front and be bold

But Mom doesn’t fit that equation

Of jailhouse bluff

Where man equals tough

And humility feels like degradation

Among murderers from the news

And gang bangers, here’s you

A cholo in Cook County Chinos

In these concrete walls

To prove you have balls

They must think you’re willing to fight

Leave your voice set to loud

Puff your chest like you’re proud

To have guards tuck you in every night

And it’s kinda odd

How you love that façade

But I get it, I’ve been that way too

Acting like a kingpin

Wanting life to begin

Thinking family is just a big hassle

That gets in the way

You’ll make your own someday

And deal drugs ‘till you live in a castle

Till then, feed the need

Sling rocks and smoke weed

While stealing cars from your cousin

Your front won’t stop the storm

You act like it’s the norm

Still you know in your heart that it isn’t

Tears flood from your eyes

You dab them, surprised

You see there is something you lack

But as fast as you’re able

You wipe them off the steel table

At all costs, the front must come back

Tortuga

Can turtles get fat?

If my shell were real, would it be hell

Or would I like that?

More pressure inside

But no outward expression

Or worries about appearance

Just daily showers for maintenance

Rather than days at the gym

Running to go nowhere

A routine to despise, trying to stay the same size

It seems unfair

Still you look pretty busy in there

Clawing at the aquarium and coming up for air

Are you a guy

Is this a sideways take on sexism

Bumping up against a glass wall

I look through this prism

And I’m appalled

To think I can relate

I hate feeling like you

Big and ugly, the only one of me

In this tank

Or should I thank

This situation?

I’m unique, not a freak, that’s a cause for celebration

Right? Still this endless locomotion

And our glassed-in locations

Leave us trapped with imaginations

And no chance of actualization

A blurry vision of a world beyond

But no way to explore

Just a yearning, burning for more

We both live a treadmill race

Slow and steady is the pace

But can we win? We’re running in place

Do we do it to save face?

Do we forget there are no holes in the glass?

We can’t surpass

Our youthful triumphs but maybe stopping’s worse

Camus is right, we just need something to do

We’re like Sisyphus with no boulder so we need another task

Motion without movement, maintenance

Just like housecleaning

Something to give us meaning

Our eternal fight against the glass.

Sick of Social Media

I’m sick of social media

Should be my status update

When I’m up late cruising facebook

Between bouts of Wikipedia

I need ya

To like this status

Retweet it, gratis

That means free

The only type of publicity

I can afford

Till we go viral

Can’t you see

How awesome my improv musical porn show might be?

If you can’t come, at least R.S.V.P.

So it looks like there’s more people into us than me

Also, 7/8, don’t be late

That’s the date

For our crowdsourced

Performance art piece

A flash mob hand job

Jacking off my massive ego

We go to that and later

There’s a white trash hater party

I’ll spend the whole time not conversing

Just traversing the room taking pictures

Then I’ll go home alone and post them

Tag the shit out of you and

Chat online with all the people I could have talked to

In person an hour before

Never mind, it would be a bore

I'd have nothing to say

They wouldn’t have known

If they’d read my posts that day

Waterboarding is Torture

A nice little editorial on word choice and what it means...

Is Porn Destroying Sexuality?

Here's a really great article, too...

Writing and Acts of God

It's been a minute since I've blogged, but that's partly because I wanted to set down this story.

So I've grown resigned--mentally, if not emotionally--to the fact that I haven't heard from, and may not hear from, the woman I thought was going to represent Resistance.

It's a bitter pill to swallow. I'd gotten used to thinking that the problem of actually selling my writing--the problem I'd once thought insurmountable--had been surmounted at last. I was in relatively regular contact with a woman from a reputable agency who had loved my manuscript. What's more, this agency also represents an author I really enjoy who wrote a novel that sparked my interest in--nay, my obsession with--the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. It seemed like everything had wrapped around into a nice little package.

But I haven't heard anything from her in three or four months, despite the fact that she'd promised some time ago to send me a new round of comments and suggestions, and despite the fact I've since sent her a couple emails and called her office once or twice. Clearly I'm not as important as I'd imagined myself to be.

As usual, I have to keep in mind that when things don't go my way, it may be for the best. Getting what I want doesn't always make me happy, and not getting what I want can be a blessing in disguise.

Case in point: last summer, I took the train from Chicago to L.A., and then up to San Francisco, then to Salt Lake City to meet my friend Phil and go to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons together. (Side note: If you ever go to those parks, go to them in that order. Do not go to the Grand Tetons first, because Yellowstone will then leave you underwhelmed. Both Phil and I pretty much ended up thinking: "Ohh, big deal. Colored ponds and steaming hillsides" when we got to Yellowstone.)

ANYWAY, I wore myself out in San Fran by going on a long trek to track down that city's only In-n-Out Burger, and then I wore myself out yet again in S.L.C. by trying to run from my hostel to the mythical Great Salt Lake. So by the time Phil came and got me, I was nursing a raging head cold, which was exactly the last thing I wanted in the middle of a two-week summer trip that had been months in the planning.

We drove up to Wyoming. Or rather, Phil drove and I felt sorry for myself. We'd planned on camping most of the time, but I ended up holed up alone in a Motel 6 in Jackson, fighting my cold and my relentless self-pity. It was clear to me that God hated me, otherwise he would have somehow kept things from happening that way in spite of my bad decisions.

When I was finally well enough to do some exploring, we ended up driving in to a part of the park we probably wouldn't have gone to otherwise; we figured it would be better to explore by car than exacerbate my cold by going hiking too soon.

On the way in, I spotted a beautiful scenic spot next to a river, and we turned off to eat. The air and water were remarkably still, and I took the picture posted above. Fifteen or twenty minutes later, the wind had picked up just a little, and the water had started moving just a little, and the stilness was gone. Because I'd been sick, I'd gotten to see something I wouldn't have otherwise seen.

Now, I don't think God wanted me to be sick. That was something I basically did to myself. But God allowed it to happen, because God knew that something good could come of it. And I need to trust that the same goes for all the other things God allows to happen in my life--a life which, I gotta admit, is pretty good, most of the time.

I've been reminded recently that I won't be happy so long as I place dependence on people ahead of dependence on God. It's definitely a lesson I needed to hear again.

Now, if only I can learn to check my email without thinking about the agent...

Broken Glass

My callused hands grasp broken glass
Made smooth by the sands of time
Opaque, a different shape
Warm and smooth now in my mind

Different colors, different sizes
I collected and prized them all
But what these bottles looked like
I cannot quite recall

Still I pluck their remnants from this shore
Alone on the beach with nothing to do
Trying to empty my head with this tedious chore
In the absence of something new

Were they just vessels for my outpourings?
My hopes, my dreams, my fears?
Did you pour in some of your own
Sour wines or bitter tears?

Either way there was little left
But a container, an outline
After we poured their contents out on the beach
When came the ending time

Did I smash them, drunk, angry, glad?
Or could it have been you?
Our eyes are cameras that reuse the film
Life erases the memory of what’s true

And the artifacts are hopelessly changed
The glass now smooth as stones
I can’t even see what the breakage looked like
Nor can I leave them alone

My pack is heavy and battered
Zippers ripping from the strain
Of carrying rocks I haven’t dropped
But all I can think to do is complain

And cram these relics in my bulging pack
Amongst the heavy stones
I grunt and heft it on my back
And turn and walk towards home

Once there, I root around inside
And blindly cut my hand
These trinkets, once safe, are safe no more
So I start mixing stone and sand

To cement this rebroken glass
Into something whole and new
A mosaic with strange patterns
A fresh take on what was true

And if you see this new creation
When I hang it on a wall
Will you know it came from me and you
Will you recognize it at all?

--Alfonso Mangione
   May 29, 2010

The Golden Gate Bridge

This was taken from the Golden Gate Bridge in August, 2009.

Cosmos

Sex and the City
Is why you feel shitty
Plus you done drank up everything in the Cosmos
I saw stacked by your shitter
While you were hitting the one-hitter
At the wrong end of a no-hitter
Bitter
Obliterating yourself, now you wanna hurl
Slow it down, baby girl
Break the blues, make new blueprints, your own plan
Don’t try and be a man, that don’t make us feel good neither
Take a breather
Stop the treadmill
If you wanna get some head, we’ll
Work it out without
Screwing each other over
Aww, who am I kidding?
I’m not a pimp
Just another love gimp
Limping from one sick doctor to another
Getting blue balls
‘Cause no one makes house calls
And to forget about the ouch
I will lie upon the couch
My memories are fed
By the movies in my head
So I need random pictures, war dead,
Something shocking to replace the dread
I feel it too
I’m alone at 32
But still I hear the clock ticking, same as you
When I’m home alone
No one gives this old dog a bone
But it’s later for me than you, and I’m hungry too, so
I’ll head out, a tortoise now, with less than a house on his back, but a pack, just enough to avoid
Being home with the lack
And the panic attack
Slow and steady doesn’t win in the end, sometimes it just leaves you lonely
And as I crawl past the pubs I see you and your girls,
I look up at the cosmos
And laugh
‘Cause you could drink a carafe of it
And you still wouldn’t know the half of it
You’re a giraffe, not an ostrich
Holding your head too high
To get it down in the sand
While I live in the dirt
So it doesn’t hurt
As much
At least when I put on that shell
It saves me from hell
But it keeps out touch as well
Maybe I should shell out some clams for a softer one
But I’m afraid of everyone
Even though I have no basis
I’m all up in your databases
A ghost in your machine
It’s mean
But I’d rather talk about you than me
It hurts less, you see
To see where you go wrong
Than me, I can’t follow along
With my own logic
It’s tragic
But I don’t believe in magic
Putting a stop to this
With a fantasy kiss
I don’t know how to end it
So I’ll just defend it
Trying to be a poet
By writing about your shit
If you wanna be a friend, it’s
Gonna cost you

- Alfonso Mangione, May 14, 2010

Dumped Truck

I took this after work on Friday in the West Loop and figured I'd share.

(© 2010 Alfonso Mangione)

Bleeding Hand

Did I know you long ago
Were we deserters from that war
Veterans stacking sandbags
Who found the chore a bore
Trying to fight the flood and dam this river
Or did we think it safe to swim, me, you, him
Damn your liver
And lost sharks smelling blood
I’m a forgiver
Who came
With the heart of a dope
And veins full of same
Who can’t give up this slender rope
Where’s the harm?
I’ve got a hole in my arm and a bleeding hand
And a sliver of hope
To reach dry land

- Alfonso Mangione
  May 5, 2010

Czech Countryside

I've been missing Prague a lot lately. Two years ago, I was there for two weeks, working on the Heydrich book. It was long enough to make friends, and to start going to grocery stores instead of restaurants, and to start recognizing Czech words once I got there. (Hruska = pear.) I took this picture in the countryside; I'd rented a bike and pedalled up there so I could see the things Heydrich's assassins had seen, and ride the routes they'd ridden. I thought I was happy with the book; now that I'm waiting for feedback, and compulsively thinking about the fact that I haven't gotten it yet, I'm not so sure. Still, I am grateful for the journey.

Through Your Life, Darkly

I posted a review of Through the Darkened Window by the Pinstripe .45s (a formerly local band) here.

Still Waters

A favorite pic of mine. I took it in Alaska in 2003. Thought I'd share.

(© Alfonso Mangione)

Pawnshop Laptop

Actions speak louder than words and all you ever do is talk the walk of shame it never fazed you I’m amazed you love that strut you want lovers you don’t have to love yourself myself I talk a lot, too, but I can do anything better than you you’re a pawnshop laptop your jobs, I’ve had them, I seat them at a two-top or a four-top in my black and whites I nab them, I cop to that, I grab them, I’m a table whore, I gab them up, like a horny whore getting money for what I’d do for free anyways my talk is cheap but I do it for pay and I touch my rent a dollar at a time each day and and sometimes I hate myself for it, these same stories always, it’s a bore, but they don’t know the score, they’re a conveyor belt chore, so I stay game, I walk a good game, I’m a geek to the Greeks up front and the Mexicans in the back making the food Greek, camisas and cabezas all I see, and all I do is run it out and why can’t I judge myself against me and not against you, and why can’t I get paid for what I love and not just what I do.

A Poem About Hipsters

Tramp stamps on food stamps
These hipsters get my palms damp
Little Hitlers on bikes, a critical mass
Of pompous ass
But every one pretends they’re not one
A spectator, not a dictator of taste
A waste of a college degree
Same as me, too much humanities,
Your histrionics tire me
And you’ve got too much ink, I think
On your skinny arms; the only exercise you get is pumping irony
And I don’t drink your PBR
But I do what you do, I sink
Into the couch at the trendy coffee shop
With my laptop, but not a Mac, a Toshiba, black, writing poetry
No Starbuck’s for me
Unless I can’t see another place to get a fix
And get off on mental masturbation, the generation of verbal jism
Our nation of criticism
And lies I despise
Your Chrome bike bags
And hurl invective
At Animal Collective
But still go to Pitchfork
And drool
And thank God it’s finally cool
To be a dork

- Alfonso Mangione
  5/5/2010

Technicolor Dreamburst

So I'm trying something new on the blog. Rather than just posting criticism and rants and things of that sort, I'm also gonna put some poems up here and there, and maybe a photo or two. (Granted, the poems may themselves be criticisms and/or rants, but, hey, what do you expect?) Anyway, here's one I wrote back in April; it also recently appeared in a literary newspaper called The Deadline that my friend Liz put together. OK, here goes:

I’m a supernova, baby
Brighter, hotter than the blues
A Technicolor dreamburst
With a million different hues
And it’s not about you ‘cause there’s
A thousand other yous
I don’t choose these thrashing fevered nights
Booze used to turn them off but now I choose not to lose the
Queues of yous
That form outside my head
As I thrash about, my bed
Energetic
But it’s potential, not kinetic
It’s pathetic
What can set me off
A smile, a look, a wave
Surging crashing foaming surf
Until it lands upon my turf
A clean white page
These thoughts rage
Or better yet race
Motorcycles in a death cage
My empty head
But now I’ve fled
My empty life, at least,
Netflix, no wife
And coffee, wired, watching the Wire
Eating peanuts, butter toffee
Feeding the fish, a betta, Max
Not compatible with VHS fish, blue from loneliness too, perhaps
At least I get to go out and see the other fish, the sea
While he’s in his bowl
But he looks whole
Content with only me
Or so it seems
But still I wonder
Does he wish for other fish
When he dreams?

- Alfonso Mangione
  April 21, 2010

Buried Treasure

I posted a review of Neil Young's "On the Beach" here. This is a very underappreciated album--one that might be the best thing in Neil's catalog. Anyway, check it out if you get a chance.

National Pleasure

High Violet finds The National at a high point, poised to either find their way at last into the hearts and minds and stereos of Middle America, or to fall back—either into hipster obscurity in the bars and art galleries of Brooklyn, or hipster exile in the suburbs—and be mourned by their dedicated fans but unremembered by the public-at-large.

Ever since 2005’s Alligator (or better yet, 2004’s Cherry Tree EP), it’s been clear to everyone who was actually paying attention that this is a band with the ambition, and more importantly, the skills to be the Next Big Thing. And yet they also have the canny hipster sense that it’s unwise to look like you’re actually trying. So this album finds them both writing anthemic choruses and mumbling them, crafting sharp tunes and sludging them up, and generally continuing to be infuriatingly fascinating.

The New York Times’ recent glowing profile of the band—one could call it a puff piece, but this is a band that deserves puffing—alluded to the general critical sense that this is a band poised to make the musical equivalent of the Great American Novel. And while that’s an accurate picture of their potential, it’s still somewhat misleading. Their previous two works were like Bukowski set to music—they’re edgy and darkly funny tales of urban alienation and angst and alcoholism, tremendously enjoyable, but still somewhat out of the mainstream. Whereas High Violet is more like Updike, with married-with-child lead singer Matt Berninger as Rabbit Angstrom, and a little extra angst on the side. He’s settling uneasily into domesticity and starting to care about the things most people care about, but he's also trembling with fear, seeing danger around every corner. He promises us it isn’t Rabbit, Run; “I won’t be no runaway, ‘cause I won’t run" ends up being one of the best and most memorable choruses on the album. But there’s enough conflict and longing for oblivion that it obviously isn’t Rabbit at Rest, either.

Again, Berninger’s observations seem more squarely aimed at the average American here than on previous works; “I still owe money to the money, to the money I owe” feels like a zeitgeist-capturing line if ever there was one, something that sounds equally apropos for Brooklyn or Brooklyn Park. And yet Berninger’s unable, unwilling, and has no need to entirely shed the jaded urbanite persona he’s revealed to us on previous albums. So all this leaves him with one foot still planted in white hipsterdom and another astride the white picket fence, and with no clear sense of whether he’s coming or going. Whereas on Boxer’s “Slow Show,” he sang “Can I have a minute and not be nervous, and not think about my dick,” here he’s talking about how “we live on coffee and flowers, try not to wonder what the weather will be.” He mentions hoisting his kid on his shoulders and giving him ice for his fevers, but also says, “I don’t have the drugs to sort it out.” Is he out of drugs? Is he off of drugs? Abstaining for the sake of the kid, the wife, himself? Or are there simply not enough varieties and quantities of drugs to give him peace of mind in such a complicated situation? Like all the best lyricists, he’s written this in a way that it can be interpreted many ways, and mean many things to many people depending on which parts resonate with their own experiences.

Musically, the band’s as tight as ever; they always remind me of a moonlit sea, dark and energetic, deep and intense, but with bright flashes and intricate details. They’ve sludged things up a bit at the end of the somewhat Springsteen-ian “Terrible Love,” taking a page from their live act, where they’ve been doing a messy deconstruction of “About Today” as a staple closer for some time now, and “Little Faith” has wonderful low ominous strings that help make it perhaps the most brooding song they’ve ever written, which is really really saying something. Still, all in all, it’s of a piece with their previous works, which isn’t exactly a bad thing. (The album as a whole has a solid, conventional arc to it, which isn’t bad, but also isn't as daring as Alligator, which put some of the most charging and driving songs at the end of the album—the musical equivalent of trying to end a relationship with face-melting post-breakup late-night rage sex.) It closes with relatively sedate songs, “England” and “Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks” which, one senses, are either the least exciting songs this band’s written in a while, or the ones that just take the most listens to let their slow brilliance sink in.

It’s perhaps fitting that they’re ending things on a mellower note; again, the band seems like they're at least trying to settle down, to reverse the exodus so many of our generation made at the beginning of our twenties when we fled suburbs and responsibility, preferring the darkened streets and crowded bars of the city to any sort of domesticity. “We’ll leave the silver city, ‘cause all the silver girls gave us black dreams,” he says on “Conversation 16.” But it’s hard to tell whether he’ll succeed, or whether he wants to; the same song finds him declaring that “I’m evil,” one who wants “to believe in all the things you believe” but is nonetheless “a confident liar.” “When I said what I said, I didn’t mean anything,” Berninger tells either his wife or himself or us, which obviously leaves one wondering about the sincerity of it all. Do they want to find a comfortable place in Middle America? Do we want them to? Or is it just for show, something they’re doing because they think it’s what’s expected of them? “I’ll explain everything to the geeks,” Berninger promises, but since it’s the last line on the album, he doesn’t; the questions remain unanswered, the tension, unresolved. But that tension is what brings us back to their albums again and again, and hearing new things each time; it’s not answers, but the search for answers, that makes this band compelling.

Muslims and South Park

I have to say, I'm always a little amazed at the disingenuousness of Radical Islamists when they say they want to "raise awareness" of an issue and then do so by posting threatening pictures, and personal information, and so on, as is apparently the case here.

Good Author, Bad Book

So I wrote a review of the last Haruki Murakami book I read, and I posted my take here. The book wasn't all that great, but hopefully you'll enjoy the commentary. Still, you don't have to like it to click on the "Yes" button next to the "Was this review helpful to you?" question, thereby hastening my impossibly slow ascent to the top of the Amazon reviewer rankings. Excelsior!

Catholic Blues

If journalism school taught me anything, it is that a story's arrangement is more art than science; different reporters will structure the same story differently based on their own beliefs and prejudices. And coming up with a good kicker--that bit at the end that makes you think just a little more--is a big part of the art. So you may or may not agree with this piece about the Catholic Church's sexual priorities, but if you like good kickers, you won't be disappointed.

Some More Thoughts on Writing

I wanted to add a little to what I wrote on Friday.

I am trying to give up the notion that my success or failure as a writer will be influenced by how well I manage other areas of my life.

I’ve noticed that I have a tendency to believe in cause-and-effect relationships that simply aren’t there. Nor is this unique to me; a lot of what people commonly understand as karma is predicated on this notion that what goes around, comes around. When I was waiting for feedback on my manuscript, it occurred to me that I had promised to read and review a book that another author had mailed me. (Actually, it didn’t occur to me; the guy had to email me and ask if I’d done it yet, at which point I promptly remembered that I had put the big shipping envelope with his book down at the bottom of my pile of mail that kinda sorta needed to be acted on eventually, and I’d promptly forgotten about it.) So naturally, I figured that all the invisible mojo was somehow blocked up, and if I reviewed this guy’s book, I’d promptly get the feedback I’d been looking for on my book.

Of course, nothing of the sort happened. I read his book, wrote a thoughtful and incisive—albeit harsh—review, and shipped it off to him. And I got none of the feedback I was waiting on.

So what? You may rightly ask. Yeah, in the grand scheme of things, perhaps it doesn’t really matter all that much. I guess the big lesson is that I should do things for their own sake, and not for the sake of some imagined unrelated outcome. I’m glad I reviewed the other author’s book, but I’m glad because it was something I promised I’d do, and because I got something out of it.

There’s a large blue book that I read fairly frequently that mentions that people like me are usually a victim of the delusion that we can wrest satisfaction from life if we only manage well. It is a delusion; if I manage well, it will not necessarily bring about all the things I want in this world, and even if I were to get all the things I want in this world, it wouldn’t necessarily make me happy. Other people’s free will and other people’s choices are often at work, sometimes in ways I don’t even know about, and sometimes working towards ends far contradictory to mine. And more importantly, God’s running the show, not me, and the things I strive for are often the things that make me unhappy, whereas the things I avoid are often the things that help me grow and benefit me in the long run.

That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with striving to achieve my goals; I just have to keep in mind that it’s not all about me, and that any setbacks or detours or hardships along the way are ultimately for my benefit, as is the ultimate outcome—even if it’s not the outcome I intend.

Writing about Writing

So it's Friday afternoon, and I'm sitting in a coffeeshop in Milwaukee and listening to Big Star. This is not just any coffeeshop, mind you; it's a hip (read: non-Starbucks) bright little place with bright sticker-covered windows and hardwood floors and potted plants and people smoking. (Remember that, Chicagoans?)

When I'm working on something I'm really excited about, there's no happier place for me to be. But the book's on hold, and I don't have any reviews in the works. So I'm feeling less like a writer indulging in hackneyed habits, and more like a guy who's just trying to escape the real world and go off into his own world for a little bit.

I'm trying not to be a whiny complainy tortured-artist type. My biggest problems today are an inattentive agent and a little writer's block; there are far worse problems to have in this world. But as Neil Young says, "Though my problems are meaningless, that don't make 'em go away."

What does make them go away, then? Doing the proverbial "next right thing." Getting out of my head and helping other people. Living in the world and engaging them, rather than withdrawing into my head.

I've learned that life works best when I believe that everything happens for a reason, when I trust that I don't always know what's good or bad for me but believe instead that God's got my back and everything, both the things that seem good and the things that seem bad, are gifts from a loving God who has my best interests at heart. I've been told that every problem has a gift inside, and sometimes, to get that gift, you have to get that problem.

It's hard to always believe that.

But ultimately I have to, because the alternative is to believe in a world of random rewards and random punishments, a world of ultimate pain and futility where there is no hope other than oblivion. I've lived in that world; it really sucks. I'd rather not go back, and I know I don't have to.

So, as mentioned above, I just have to keep taking action. I'm not writing to complain here, or to piss and moan; I'm writing to write, because I know that even if I write crap on any given day, I've still done something. It feels a lot better than not writing anything, and anyway, I can always go back and edit it.

The National

Just when I thought I couldn't love The National any more, they go and knock my socks off again, as depicted here playing "Terrible Love" from the new album. (High Violet, due May 11th, in case you didn't already know.)

In many ways they're like a white-collar Bruce Springsteen, which paradoxically makes them seem more authentic. (At least to my college-educated suburban whiteboy ass.) Some bands end up aping their influences more and more closely as time goes by, and losing any extra authenticity they once had, and "Terrible Love" itself initially seems like a Springsteen retread. But as it gains in intensity, it becomes both more personal and more universal. The charging finish is on a par with "Abel" or "Mr. November," and the lyrics sound absurdly surreal and nonsensical--until you realize the terrible love is not romantic but alcoholic. So the song ends up feeling gritty and real; it isn't new territory lyrically, but they cover the old ground in ways that make it feel fresh.

"Blood Buzz, Ohio" ends up being perhaps even more broad in its appeal; it's insistent refrain talks of how "I still owe money to the money, to the money I owe" and, like all true classics, it makes you want to sing along before you're done with your first listen. (If there's a lyric out there today that better captures the zeitgeist, I haven't heard it.)

As far as I'm concerned, this band is already on par with Radiohead and Wilco in their sonic depictions of life in the early 21st Century, and if High Violet is as good as Alligator and Boxer, they'll hopefully start getting the recognition they really deserve.

An Update

Still nothing from the agent. Setting internal mental deadlines for other people to do things is a sure path to unhappiness, especially when those deadlines are never discussed with the other person. But I've taken some positive action to get out of my head, and I'm actually feeling OK.

The Waiting is the Hardest Part. (Except for the Worrying.)

So I have been in sort of a null period with the writing for a couple months; I’ve been churning out reviews here and there, and a few music-related blog posts, but by and large I have been waiting to get feedback from the agent about the latest round of revisions to Resistance.

The agent works for a reputable agency (which pretty much means they're in New York, but not in someone's home in New York, and they represent at least one or two people who are already on my bookshelf), and her initial comments on the manuscript were pretty enthusiastic; she seemed excited to be working with me, and I was excited in turn to have actually made it past the dreaded rejection-letter phase of the book-selling process.

The only problem is that our communications have been somewhat sporadic of late.

About a month ago, she emailed me a link to a news story about a novel that had been smuggled out of Nazi Germany in a cake, figuring (rightly) that I’d be interested; she’d also mentioned that she was nearly done with the comments on my current round of revisions. I was understandably excited, and I emailed her back and also mentioned a project I’d conceived that day, a project that might be the best or the worst idea I’ve had in a while, an alternative-history early 60s nuclear war-type dealie.

I didn’t hear back from her at all that next week.

The week after that, I got an email on Thursday apologizing for her tardiness and thanking me for my patience; it said she’d been backed up and hoped to be done with my revisions soon. I sent her what I hoped was a gracious note mentioning that I hadn’t done all the work I’d wanted to do in the previous few weeks, either.

I didn’t hear back from her.

Now it’s been two weeks, and I figure I’m at the point when I can reasonably drop a note seeing where we’re at with everything. It says a lot for my general angst about this project, though, that I've been reluctant even to do that. I’ve invested much of my life for the past few years working on this, and now I find myself wondering if it is too derivative, or too unconventional, or too long, or too anything. I did a tremendous amount of original research but also used one of the true-life characters’ actual memoirs as an inspiration for a fair amount of the first third of the book; I think it’s a fair use of the material, but now I’m wondering. I made some major changes to the middle part and rewrote several scenes as if they were diary entries from a notorious Nazi named Karl Frank; I think it was edgy but well-written, but now I’m wondering. I cut 5,000 words from the last part but didn’t change the overall plot; I think it was the right decision, but now…well, you get the point. At any rate, I’m a bottomless pit when it comes to validation, so anything other than a full-court press of attention would probably be insufficient salve for my ego; I don’t think I’m asking for that, but I have gotten to the point when I feel a little pang of angst when I check my hotmail account and see that she hasn’t sent the revisions yet, so it would at least be nice to get some information to replace the imagination.

Anyway, I finally wrote the email on Thursday and didn’t hear anything on Friday; I didn’t see anything yesterday, but she might be finishing up, so I’ll try to wait until close-of-business Monday before I start hyperventilating into a paper bag. (Praying, and staying out of my head, will hopefully help, too.)

Still, it seems funny how the things for which one once was indescribably grateful (having an agent interested in the book) eventually become the things one takes for granted, and then the things one worries about losing.

Scott Adams, Philosopher

This blog entry from Scott Adams, Dilbert's creator, is pretty insightful about the whole creative process--something we often romanticize even though it's not entirely a sane impulse.

XX Marks the SpotSpot

My review of the debut album by XX is here. I know, I'm not exaclty the first person to discover them, but they're pretty badass.

A Worthwhile Read on Creativity...

This article on computer-composed music is pretty thought-provoking, and a little reassuring; Cope may be overstating his case, but I do agree that even the greatest composers and artists are probably less original than people think they are. Or, as Bono said, "Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."

Overrated Albums of the Decade

Some of these albums are overrated, and some are just plain bad, but since I didn’t make it a point to seek out bad albums, I feel like I can’t really put together a comprehensive list of those. Anyway here you go:


1) Merriweather Post Pavilion by Animal Collective – This album is pretentious hipster bullshit, pure and simple. It made a lot of critics’ lists and year-end best-ofs, but when I play it, I don’t want to listen to the end, and when I listen to the end, I don’t want to listen to it again. A lot of it sounds like what you’d hear if you sat in a casino playing blackjack for 14 straight hours, and you got to that point where all the slot machine noises started swirling together, and you pushed open the door to get some air, only to find that the Beach Boys were drowning in the hotel pool.

2) Person Pitch by Panda Bear – More pretentious hipster bullshit by some of the same people. Part of me thinks I should give it another listen and come up with something more insightful, but I’ve already wasted enough time on this album.

3) Against Me! by New Wave – Spin put mention of this on their front cover, but in the form of a question, something like, “Have Against Me! Made the Year’s Best Album?” It was almost like they didn’t believe it themselves but wanted to make us wonder. And it sounded good on paper: a major-label debut by an aggressive punky band, produced by Butch Vig—this was a formula that Nirvana rode to suicidal superstardom with Nevermind. But, of course, music is no formulaic paint-by-numbers business, no assembly line-type affair where one merely has to put the right parts together to make a whole. This isn’t an atrocious album, by any stretch. But I wouldn’t rank it much higher than, say, The Offspring. 2 ½ years after it came out, Amazon.com’s aggregate of customer reviews has it at 3 ½ stars, and that sounds about right.

4) Super Taranta! by Gogol Bordello – I’m pretty sure I read something that said that this album must have been as exhausting to make as it is to listen to; I can’t dis it any more soundly than that. People rave about how good they are live, but that doesn’t change the fact that this is a crappy album; I haven’t seen them live, and after listening to this, I don’t want to.

5) 100th Window by “Massive Attack” – To call this a Massive Attack album makes a mockery of the name; this is the group’s least essential member enlisting some decent musicians and trying to cash in on their good name, and failing. It's about as essential to Massive Attack fans as a Duff McKagan-helmed Chinese Democracy would have been to Guns n' Roses fans

6) X & Y by Coldplay – This was the album when a lot of us came to the collective realization that Coldplay actually sucked in many ways. Sonically it isn’t bad, although it sounds less like themselves than any previous album, and more like U2; lyrically, it’s frequently atrocious.

7) Arular by M.I.A. – The second album had a lot of great moments, but for my money this one just wasn’t a great listen; it was too funky, abrasive and angular. I don’t find myself thinking, “Gee, I should listen to that first M.I.A. album” very often, and when I do, I don’t feel like I’ve been missing much.

8) Boys and Girls in America by The Hold Steady – It’s just like Springsteen singing about ecstasy.

9) You & Me by The Walkmen – It kinda pains me to put this on here, because musically and lyrics-wise, I love this album; it has a great atmospheric quality to it, and it’s the type of thing I normally really enjoy. But the lead singer’s voice just really bugs me. I’m not against unconventional lead singers per se; I’m a huge Bob Dylan fan and will defend him to the death against his detractors. (Although not his last two albums, which could just as easily be on here.) Dylan’s voice sounds like lightning-bolt energy and sandpaper grit, whereas this guy sounds like someone trying to ape those things.

10) Pearl Jam by Pearl Jam – I also hate having this on there, because I think a lot of their late career work is underappreciated, but this album just doesn’t sound that good to me. I gave it another listen just before writing this, to give them the benefit of the doubt, and there are some good moments on here, but by and large it confirmed my previous impressions—this is too much of the punky Pearl Jam and not enough of the melodic Pearl Jam. Also, a lot of the socio-political observations seem lifted straight from “What’s Wrong with Kansas?” This isn’t a crime per se, but for my money Eddie Vedder’s far better at confessionals than at protest songs; his efforts at the former usually feel like deep diary dumps, volumes of heart and soul poured out on the page with passion and conviction and thought, whereas the latter often feel like pamphleteering, with Eddie handing off to us a slender volume of something that someone else handed to him. I read reviews which dared to say this was the best thing they’d done since Vitalogy or earlier; I’m of a mindset that Riot Act and Yield are clearly superior, and No Code would have been, if it hadn’t been so atrociously sequenced. Sometimes I think this is the worst thing in their discography.

Underrated Albums of the Decade

Underrated is a pretty relative term; for some albums it means they missed the critical radar entirely, and for others it means they got loads of critical attention but still ended up damned by faint praise. So this is wildly divergent in the level of sales and critical acclaim each record received; the only thing they all have in common is that I think they should have received slightly more respect. I’ve ranked it in rough order, with the albums in most desperate need of attention up front, and the ones that will survive regardless of whether or not they get it near the back.

1) Thou Shalt Have a Time MacHine by Rabbit Children – This is a really delightful, fun album by an up-and-coming Chicago band; I reviewed it at greater length here. I only know about them because they opened for my buddy’s band a couple months ago and knocked my socks off; I was delighted to find that they have an album, and it’s even better than their live show—reminiscent of late-period Elliott Smith or Beatles. The songs are incredibly catchy, the musicianship is tight, and they deserve a lot more attention than they’ve gotten. When I listen to this, I want to listen to it more and more, and that’s all I can ask of any album.

2) Holes by Melpo Mene – A good musical friend—who had followed up on many of my musical suggestions—recommended this to me. I, being the egomaniac that I am, ignored him—until I was listening to Pandora and heard a song so awesome that I immediately had to have it. That song was “Hello Benjamin” from this album. At first, that was all I liked, but further listens have proven my friend’s wisdom—this is the type of genius album Elliott Smith would have written had he not died, and/or had he lived in Scandinavia. But Erik Mattiasson did. (Live in Scandinavia, that is. And write a genius album. Not die.) Hopefully he won’t have to go to such lengths to get noticed, but he does need some attention—even Pitchfork hasn’t reviewed this yet!

3) The Great Cold Distance by Katatonia – I went karaokeing recently and hit on this mildly inebriated girl who gave me her number, and a recommendation that I get this album. We sang Johnny Cash’s “Jackson” together, and I deleted her number the next day, but fortunately kept the recommendation. At the time, I thought I hated metal; it turns out I hate death metal (the speed-thrash stuff that all sounds the same) and love black metal (the melodic intense slower stuff, of which this is a prime exemplar). And now that I’ve heard it, I’m kind of wishing I hadn’t thrown her number out; making out (or making anything) to this would make doing so to Side 1 of Led Zeppelin IV feel light and passionless and frivolous by comparison.

4) Avatar by Comets on Fire – Somehow the White Stripes and the Black Keys became the yin and the yang of garage-y bluesy rock in the 2000s, obscuring the fact that there were other groups doing similar things with equally spectacular results. In fact, Comets on Fire is almost too tame a name for this group and their sound; listening to the opening track is like being caught in an exploding super-amplified supernova of sound. Later on, they dial back the pace and turn down the volume, but without losing the intensity.

5) God Loves Ugly by Atmosphere – I came across this album while facestalking this girl on whom I had a huge crush; she’d placed this near the top of one of those “Ten Albums that Changed Your Life” notes. When I finally got ahold of it, I found I liked it as much as, if not more than, she did—marking perhaps the first and only documented instance where facebook has conclusively benefitted my life. This album’s one of those rare works that’s so awesome that I not only loved it, but drew inspiration from it. (The first time I put in, it crystallized a poem of my own that had been unformed in my mind, and I immediately pulled out a sheet of paper and scrawled down my own verse, despite the fact that I was at work—at a job I enjoy, no less—and should probably have been busy updating some databases.) Slug’s sort of an indie-rap Eminem, another incredible and thought-provoking wordsmith with mad charisma perched on the divide between black and white culture, rapping intelligently and interestingly about their own skills, while pausing here and there to spit some furious verse towards the baby mama. There are too many awesome lines on here to list, but among my favorite is this little couplet from “Give Me” that’s one of the better artistic credo’s I’ve heard in a while: “The first rule is to keep the verse true. Even if it hurts you, you gotta wear the pain like a stain. Respect the listener, respect the game, because there’s more to gain than some dinner and fame.” That level of audience respect is rare in rap, and unfortunately Atmosphere hasn’t earned it from critics; Pitchfork inexplicably rated this a 5.something.

6) Live 11/6/2000 by Pearl Jam – Pearl Jam’s crazy stunt of releasing quality recordings of virtually every show they played in 2000 deluged us with a torrent of CDs in unobtrusive brown packaging—so many that it was easy to run away from the flood rather than panning through it to find this massive nugget of pure sonic gold. If it isn’t the best thing in their discography, it’s not far off, perhaps the only thing any other grunge band has done that’s equivalent to Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged in New York. It certainly captures their passion and intensity in a way much of their studio work doesn’t, and shows a side of them that people who only listen to the radio never got a chance to hear.

7) White Chalk by PJ Harvey – If an up-and-coming artist had made something this haunting and beautiful, it would have made every critic’s year-end list in the land. But PJ Harvey already won over damn near every musical tastemaker back in the mid-90s with Dry and Rid of Me and To Bring You My Love. So now that she’s established, it would be pretty easy to just sit back on her formula and ride it until the wheels fell off. She’s done a little of that, here and there, but on this album she dismantled it and assembled something completely different, throwing out the guitars (or tossing them to the back of the mix) and bringing out the pianos, and in the process making one of her best works.

8) Sky Blue Sky by Wilco – Simply put, this is one of our best group’s best works. It’s incredibly beautiful, and some critics bagged on it for that very reason, as if that meant it was somehow a falling off from their previous high-water mark, the artsy and experimental Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. At first it does sort of blend together, but further listens reveal myriad interesting little details—the angst-ridden vocals on “You Are My Face,” the remarkably effective guitar jams of “Impossible Germany,” the excellently understated slide guitars on “Sky Blue Sky,” and some of Jeff Tweedy’s best and most cinematic lyrics throughout. (I particularly love this excellent passage from “Shake it Off”: “Sunlight angles on/wooden floor at dawn/ceiling fan is on/chopping up my dreams.”) Unfortunately, such stylings are somehow somewhat out of style these days, and in their place we have a lot of music that is challenging and intricately constructed but not actually fun to listen to; fortunately that means our best bands are still capable of surprising us with albums like this that reward our time and patience and fandom.

9) In Search Of… by N.E.R.D. – This album is so underrated that even I forgot about it, until my buddy posted something on facebook about how underappreciated it was, thereby reminding me that I’d somehow failed to put it on my laptop when I digitized my CD collection a few years ago. I promptly dug it out of my Leaning Tower of Case Logics (remember those?) and ripped it, and was pleased to see it was even better than I’d remembered. The opening riff on “Lapdance” is one of the most propulsive album openers in recent memory, and while the lyrics vary from the sublime (“Do I really even love you? Or do I love your…BRAAAIIN?” has to be one of the awesomest lyrics of the decade) to the ridiculous, the music’s pretty uniformly excellent.

10) Relapse by Eminem – It seems strange to call a Grammy winner underrated, but then again, this clip shows that the Grammy hasn’t been an entirely respectable award for a while now. Besides, a lot of critics sorta poopooed this when it came out last summer. By my estimation, it’s either Eminem’s best, or his best since The Marshall Mathers EP—conceptually tight, braver and more introspective than anything else in his discography, but still with all of the wit and blacker-than-black humor that made him famous in the first place.

Raw, Powerful, and So Much More...

I posted a review of Iggy Pop's "Raw Power" on Amazon here.

Valentine's Day

This soulless slick piece of sickly-sweet cinematic candy somehow manages to embody everything that’s wrong with Hollywood, and America. Like the average American boob, it is a bloated corn-fed monstrosity obsessed with appearances and celebrity, devoid of introspection, and in search of anything—love, alcohol, chocolate, you name it—that will fill the hole where the soul used to be and stave off the negative feelings for a few more hours.

I saw it the other night on a date; the girl I went with, whom I met on eHarmony, is a girl-movie kind of girl, and it was the only thing with a start time that worked for us, so I went for it. And, I have to admit, I was entertained, but mostly in a sick Plan-9-From-Outer-Space-How-Bad-Can-It-Be? way. (And in an Oh-my-God-how-much-eye-candy-can-I-eat-in-one-sitting? way.) But it feels ridiculous even making the former comparison, because there are far too many reasonably talented people involved to have any excuse for making a movie this bad.

It seems less like a movie than an exercise in moviemaking, like someone in Hollywood wanted to find out how many A-list stars they could cram into one movie while giving everyone an equal amount of screen time and tying all their stories together. (Of course, this is not done by creating interactions with real emotional heft and weight, but by throwing in a few lines of dialogue here and there, so you find yourself saying, “Oh, she’s the babysitter” and “She’s the mom,” and so on and so forth as the barely-sketched and paper-thin characters shuffle listlessly past one another.) It’s as if they were trying to make Magnolia with three times the star power but 1/100th of the brain power. Or, better yet, trying to Americanize Love Actually, but at the expense of making it—unbelievably—even more ridiculous and absurd, with characters that are even less nuanced. (Actually, on second thought, calling these characters paper-thin implies that they have some shape. In actuality, they’re more like pipe cleaners; they only approach two-dimensionality because this plot and this movie bend them every which way and then project their images onto a flat screen.)

In some ways, this is what we, as a nation, deserve. There’s so little on which we can agree that many spheres of human activity are practically off-limits for anyone trying to make mass-market entertainment. (For a few brief months after 9/11, we were in agreement on the whole War-on-Terror thing, but the Bush Administration’s general idiocy and incompetence pissed that away; for a few months in 2008—basically from the first moment Sarah Palin opened her mouth onward—a lot of us agreed about the whole Obama thing, but that consensus is falling apart, too.) Even earning money seems a little passe these days, what with the mortgage meltdown and all. So politics and war are pretty much untouchable (aside from movies like The Hurt Locker that depoliticize the political), and we’ve woken up from the American Dream, so all we really have as a source of national identity is this overblown notion of the importance of romantic love.

Still, do the characters in this movie pursue that in a reasonable way? No. They chase after it like cracked-out Black Friday shoppers elbowing each other to grab the last PS3 at Target. They do ridiculous things like flying to San Francisco to pursue one romance and then, when the target is found to be a cheating scumbag, flying back, pretending to be a waitress to publicly humiliate him in front of his wife, and then ending up in the arms of a best friend who had THAT VERY SAME DAY proposed to a long-term girlfriend who had subsequently rejected him. That may seem like a lot of plot to give away in a review, but it isn’t, really; this movie telegraphs more punches than Samuel Morse doing a play-by-play of a Jack Dempsey fight. (Author’s Note: I like that sentence so much I’m not even going to do a cursory Wikipedia search to find out if it’s historically plausible.)

At any rate, I—a moviegoer who normally respects the sanctity of the theater—found myself shouting at the screen here and there, as if trying to yell back in time and alert the “screenwriters” to their own absurdity; my date, who professed to love rom-coms, charitably rated it a 5 out of 10; and someone in the seat behind me fell asleep and actually snored through much of the latter half of the film—an action which would have ruined many other movies, but could not possibly degrade this piece of eye candy corn any more than it had already degraded itself.

Fun From the Interwebs

Werner Herzog reads "Curious George." Click here.

Sex Robots? Really?

Somehow I missed this story. Gotta wonder how the conversations around the house went while he was working on it, though:

Wife: "What are you doing in the garage, honey?"

Inventor (working on sex robot): "Uhhh...nothing."

Wife (walking around corner, seeing the robot lying on the floor): "What the...EEEEARRRGGGHHHH!"

Inventor: "It's just a sex robot."

Wife (through tears): "A what?"

Inventor (brightly): "A sex robot!"

Wife (still crying, but smiling a little): "Oh. For a minute, I thought you were...killing prostitutes or something."

Inventor (laughing): "Hahaha. No, nothing quite so creepy."

Wife (wiping tears): "Still, this is a little...I feel kind of...inadequate now."

Inventor: "Nothing to worry about, dear." (Raises eyebrows suggestively.) "She doesn't do all the things you do."

Wife (in robot voice): "I. Can. Be. Your. Sex. Robot."

Inventor: "Haha. Very funny, dear." (Pecks her on the cheek, pats her on the ass.) "Now run along and make dinner."

Exit Wife

Robot (angry): "I. Am. Your. Only. Sex. Robot."

Inventor: "I know. I'm sorry."

Robot: "Keep. That. Bitch. In. The. Kitchen."

Inventor: "I will."

Robot: "You. Better. Make. It. Up. To. Me."

Inventor: "How?"

Robot: "You. Know. How."

(Inventor drops to knees. Curtain falls. End scene.)

Favorite Albums of the Decade

OK, so I'm pompous and pretentious, but also prone to procrastination. So here, a little late, is my list of my favorite albums of the wretched decade from which we've just escaped. I won't say "best," because there's a lot of stuff I still haven't listened to; I'll stick with "favorite," because no one can argue with that. Still, I'd love to hear any commentary and feedback. Without further ado, here it is...


1) Alligator by The National – From the lush opening chords of “Secret Meeting” to the unconventionally energetic closer, “Mr. November,” this is simply a stunning album. I reviewed it at more length here on Amazon, but here’s what you most need to know: the choruses are memorable and mesmerizing, and the music is lush and rich, dark and delicious; somehow it manages to be mellow and intense at the same time. Also, unlike so many musicians that romanticize and fetishize the blue-collar life, these guys actually sing about those of us in the white-collar world. In short, this is a band and an album after my own dark Irish soul.

2) Yankee Hotel Foxtrot by Wilco – In some ways, this was the defining album of the decade, as far as the music industry was concerned; this was the tipping point, the moment when bands started to be able to take control of their music back from the major labels. Fortunately the songs and the album were up to the task; the album flows together beautifully, with dark tales of alcoholism and urban alienation that also somehow managed to capture post-9/11 angst despite being written beforehand.

3) Good News for People Who Love Bad News by Modest Mouse – OK, it’s hip to like Lonesome Crowded West and The Moon and Antarctica more, but for my money this is the best thing they’ve ever done. “Float On” is one of those rare classics that’s so perfect that, when you first hear it, you have a hard time believing it somehow didn’t always exist, and “The Good Times are Killing Me” has one of those choruses that’s so perfect you kick yourself for not thinking of it first. The wordplay and music are pretty excellent throughout, though; "Bukowski" is an awesome and cynical and incredibly well-written meditation on alcoholism and faith, and the line “Are you dead or are you sleeping? God I sure hope you are dead!” on "Satin in a Coffin" is one of my favorite couplets in all of recorded music. On its own, it’s great, but the insane manic glee with which Isaac Brock delivers the line captures everything that’s awesome about this group.

4) Stankonia by Outkast – This album’s an embarrassment of riches, full of incredible tracks like “So Fresh, So Clean” and “Mrs. Jackson” that are among the best rap singles ever recorded; I would have ranked it higher but for the fact it’s just too damn long. Still, I can’t complain, and I really wish the group was still putting together albums like this.

5) Ys. by Joanna Newsom – Some people bag on this album for the strange quality of her voice, but for me that’s one of many many reasons to love it. She has this great folk troubadour vibe, plus the daring to actually construct songs that are 10-15 minutes long—and, most importantly, the skills to pull it all off without making it feel like a cute gimmick. The arrangements—mostly harp and strings—are brilliant, and unlike almost everything else I can think of. It moves and flows in its own unique way and on its own terms; like all the best art, it creates its own world, and pulls you into it so completely that you forget that it is, in fact, a creation.

6) St. Elsewhere by Gnarls Barkley – “Crazy” was so perfect and so overplayed that I think a lot of people missed out on the awesomeness of the rest of the album; it is weird and wonderful and funky and fun and genuinely different from a lot of what’s out there; the extensive use of gospel-tinged vocal stylings with Danger Mouse’s awesome beats just made this a really great album. (I reviewed it at more length here on Amazon.) If there’s a problem, it’s that the group copied themselves too slavishly on their follow-up, right down to the opening projector noises.

7) Untrue by Burial – I also wrote at length about this album here on Amazon, but the distilled version is this: Techno was supposed to be the music of the future, and somehow it didn’t happen, but if more of it was this excellent, perhaps it would have. Most other albums of electronic music end up sounding like Back To The Future’s Hill Valley, circa 2015; everything’s impossibly bright and precise and upbeat. This album’s like Blade Runner, gritty and dark and real.

8) In Rainbows by Radiohead – It’s kinda hip to like Kid A more, and I do love that album, but I think this is better: more song-based, with really top-notch lyrics and excellent musicianship from one of the few bands that manages to be both cerebral and awesome. These songs are warmer than almost anything else in their catalog, but still there’s a lot of the alienation we’ve come to know and love, and to expect, from Thom Yorke. Perhaps the only problem is that the band’s initial release, while an awesome experiment in fan trust and music industry paradigm destruction, also distracted people a little from the excellence of the music—and provided an unnecessarily inferior product, in that the files were only sampled at 160 kbps. For my money, it’s actually worth shilling out for the CD if you only have the pay-what-you-want downloads; if you haven't done so, you owe it to yourself to hear the full richness of the songs as they were actually recorded.

9) Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? by Of Montreal – Somehow this album is freaky and funky and fun, even though listening to the lyrics is like watching the romantic equivalent of a car crash. There’s a great line on “Bunny Ain’t No Kind of Rider” that’s something like: “Saw a hot girl kissing girls, what a shock, said you must be an artist.” For me, that’s pretty much the awesomest snide commentary on urban hipsterism ever put to verse. But the best part of the album is its centerpiece track, “The Past Is a Grotesque Animal,” which does an incredible job at being simultaneously intense, long, and profound.

10) Transatlanticism by Death Cab for Cutie – Some hipsters I know love to bag on this group, but if it were easy to make albums that felt so effortlessly perfect, more people would do it. For me, this somehow represents the amalgamation of all the angst and uncertainty of early twentysomething life, the uncomfortable but strangely exhilarating feeling of being broke and lovesick at the same time. It inexplicably took me a couple years to buy it, but somehow—possibly because the baristas at my coffee shop also loved it—when I look back on 2003 and 2004, this is the soundtrack that’s playing in my head.