December 2008
500: 32-46 →
tomewing:
More of my liveblogging the Pitchfork 500. If I updated this more regularly I wouldn’t feel the need to pimp it here! (But it’s surprisingly difficult to get 90 mins uninterrupted writing/listening time…)
Particularly like the tracking things forward and backward in time here, esp. with This Heat and Suicide.
New York - Live: Fall Out Boy Week Continues at... →
offnotesnotes:
Liking this album better than the last one on early listens, btw.
Good piece. Particularly liked:
Folie à Deux translates to “a madness shared by two.” It’s stupendously pretentious. But the band knows it’s stupendously pretentious, so it’s almost endearing.
This is true about a lot of the music I like, I think. Well, OK, half the music I like.
The recession is making studios turn toward...
So pictures conceived in the bubble were being born as it burst. That is leaving studio executives with slightly tougher, more challenging schedules than they might choose were they to start from scratch today — or forcing them to make difficult choices.
Thus, Universal Pictures now says it is not planning to shoot the once seemingly imminent “Bobby Fischer Goes to War,” a drama about the 1972...
WatchAn Idol covers Cohen, but not “Hallelujah.” A lot of Cohen songs are likely Idol material, but not this one, not by a long shot, so kudos. (via jaimeleighfairbrother)
Poptimism: My Part In Its Downfall
tomewing:
I was thinking this morning about the “pro-pop” critical movement of the early 00s (because it is now the late 00s, and soon it won’t be the 00s at all).
What struck me is that there were two* quite different strands of argument at work towards the same aim: (roughly speaking - “How do we get alt.dudes to enjoy chart pop again?”).
Strand 1 was the technological argument: you should...
Governor Paterson unveils "fuck the single,...
peterwknox:
cajunboy:
You see what happens when SNL makes fun of him and everybody blogs about it!
Gov. Paterson’s proposed $121 billion budget hits New Yorkers in their iPods - and nickels-and-dimes them in lots of other places, too.
Trying to close a $15.4 billion budget gap, Paterson called for 88 new fees and a host of other taxes, including an “iPod tax” that taxes the sale of...
Yes More Drama: A Blog →
Financial bailout update
Rachel and I spent some time last night trying to figure out what’s going on with the bailout—the financial one, not the car industry one. I thought other people might be interested? As I understand it, here’s what’s actually happened so far:
The original idea was that the government would buy up the “toxic” securities as a way of cleaning up the books of...
Drunkenfreude →
It seems to me that sometime around the 2/3 mark of the 20th century the literary mode became much more open to shame. Because writers desperately do not want to be normal and because in the postwar period normal Americans were seen to be profligate, gluttonous boors, indulgence is seen as a moral failing when depicted in print. In most any current novel, getting drunk or buying expensive things...
The Idolator Interview: Butch Walker And Patrick... →
Vacancy
Because I am terrible at parking and a grad student on vacation, when it came time to move the car this morning I decided to just go to Ikea for an hour instead of trying to find another space. Being at Ikea early in the morning on a weekday is a weird experience, at least if you’re used to going on the weekends like I am. Nobody is angry (except for the employees) and by the time you...
How to shoot down someone who outdrew ya →
Apparently there’s an effort on now to stop the X Factor version of “Hallelujah” from hitting #1 by buying the Jeff Buckley version instead. Interesting! I’ve listened to so many versions of this song by now that I no longer bother with new ones, but apparently this one actually changes the musical component a bit, so I’m listening to it now. For most of the song...
