I didn’t actually make it out to this event, but it’s return is quite welcome. The long running experimental electronic night is a much needed alternative to the prevalence of dance-oriented electronic music events in Seattle. I’ll definitely be paying attention to future line-ups at this monthly.

2. No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

The Coen Brothers movie was a fantastic, atypical thriller that helped expand the vocabulary of cinematic expense, while frustrating moviegoers expecting a straightforward resolution. It turns out the adaptation was incredibly faithful, thought there’s something about McCarthy’s sparse prose that accentuates the methodical amorality of Chigurgh. You never get inside his head, but you don’t need to, and you wouldn’t understand him any better if you did.

3. Korg DS-10 for Nintendo DS

What could possibly make the Nintendo DS, a portable video game system with innovative control elements like a touchscreen, microphone input, and dual displays, even better? How about a full-fledged modular synthesizer, drum machine, and step sequencer modeled on the Korg MS-10 hardware synth, all in one convenient cartridge? With plenty of memory for saving preset sounds and patterns, my Nintendo DS is now a secondary portable music studio.

4. Moth/Wolf Cub by Burial and Four Tet (Warp Records)

No artwork (well, black on black artwork, which might as well be no artwork). No previews online. No tracklisting. No advance copies. Two of the most unique producers around join forces for one super limited edition split vinyl release that sold out in no time at all. Yes, this is on my top 5 even though I haven;t seen or heard it. But I’m anxiously awaiting the appearance of the vinyl rip. Preferably in FLAC format…fingers crossed.

5. Food Lifeline

I spent a few hours here on Saturday, helping sort 2,500 pounds of frozen carrots into 3 pound baggies with a group of Virginia Tech alums. This non-profit turns 95% of it’s donations into food that it distributes to the needy and hungry of Western Washington on a daily basis, with the help of volunteer groups and donations from grocery stores and food producers. Last year they gave out 21 million pounds of food from a variety of sources. They have a letter carriers food drive coming up, and there are other ways individuals can help out.

Bling bling, y’all.

2. Fell – Fermé Ferme

A new full length album from Seattle’s John McCaig (for these keeping track, he was the mastering engineer on the first two Miniature Airlines releases, and also hosted this site on PanicNow, back in the day). This album is filled with rich, unique sounds, including idiosyncratic processed drums and monophonic synthesis, and it’s soon to be available in lossless FLAC format, for the low low price of $8.99.

3. Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Pynchon’s next novel, the follow up to the sprawling 1,000+ page epic Against the Day, is a relatively sprightly 384 page detective novel. For those keeping track, that makes it his second shortest novel, just behind the brief Crying of Lot 49 and nowhere near the massive heft of Mason & Dixon or Gravity’s Rainbow. Of course, the brevity does not guarantee the new book will be straightforward; nothing Pynchon has ever written fits that description. Fans of literature both dense and delirious should note the date August 4th on their calendar, and be at their local bookstore for this release.

4. 214 live at Broken Disco (Chop Suey, April 17th)

At the latest installment of Seattle’s best electronic music night, the main dance floor was nearly empty early in the evening, with the sole exception being one young woman in flapper-esque clothing dancing in the center of the room as a handful of heads bobbed to the beat. How can this be you ask? The simple answer is that the real party was not on the main floor, but in the so-called make-out lounge, where Seattle-based prodcuer 214 was laying down some seriously intricate, yet still groove worthy music, somewhere in the no man’s land between IDM, electro, and minimal techno. And the kids who came out that night were eating it up, myself included.

5. Harry Potter & The Prisoner of Azkaban  by J.K. Rowling

Yes, I am only just now getting around to reading the Harry Potter books. And I have to say that this has been my favorite one so far. Maybe that has something to with the fact that I saw the first two movies before reading any of the books, or maybe it’s just that this book has the perfect balance of light whimsy and dark intrigue. I’m now on a deadline; I’m going to need to finish Books 4, 5 and 6 before the next movie hits theatres, as well a catch up on the other movies.

From my current reading. Wickedly funny, ten times more so than the cinematic version. And it would have to be, wouldn’t it? I mean, on a wickedness scale of 1 to 100, imagine where Audrey Hepburn would fall, as opposed to Mr. Capote. The movie will definitely bear some re-watching when I’m done with this, as I have a feeling the experience will be much different.

Still remixing. Getting excited about working in my new music workspace (a sprawling, accessible area compared to my old setup). Getting excited about visiting Seattle at the end of the month.

Finally finished my months-long Salinger spree, completing Seymour: an Introduction the other night. Tearing through my DVDs of the first season of Arrested Development.

Need a bed. Preferably a futon. Preferably one that won’t destroy my back.

Open Mic was fun the other night. I did Wilco’s “Pot Kettle Black” (which I’ve been listening to a lot lately) and re-attempted Elliott Smith’s “Happiness”, which I drunkenly butchered the week before (I already blogged about that elsewhere). But this week made up for that disaster, I think. It was kind of slow, due to the holidays, but it was a nice crowd nonetheless.

I finished re-reading The Crying of Lot 49 recently also. I enjoyed it immensely the first time, but I feel like I sppreciated it more the second, especially having more familiarity with Pynchon’s other works. It’s interesting to see some of his obsessions carry over to other books. I’m planning on re-reading Gravity’s Rainbow again sometime too, but that’s a pretty hefty time investment, I don’t get to read much anymore these days.

Oh! Almost forgot. I won Green Day tickets and Meet and Greet passes last weekend, which is funny because I don’t like Green Day. I owned a copy of Dookie for about a month when it came out, but it wore off on me pretty quickly. Anyways, I only won the tickets because Emily took me along when she was trying to win them, so the tickets found a good home with Green Day uber-fans Emily and Marisa. Unfortunately, the Meet and Greet passes were not transferable for contractual reasons. We were thinking of giving Emily my old ID (in which I have long hair and look rather less masculine than currently) and trying to pass her off as a transsexual, but decided it wasn’t worth the hassle.

Made a stop at Amoeba Records while in the city also, and got a pretty good haul for right around $50. I got Hood’s Singles Compiled and Compilations 1995-2002 pretty cheap, Fog’s self-titled (which I haven’t been able to rip…grrr!), M?m’s Summer Make Good, Son Volt’s Straightaways, the Freakbitchlickfly compilation on Violent Turd (featuring copyright abusing remixes and mashups by Kid 606 and friends), and Mates of State’s All Day EP. Good times.

Not a lot of music happening. “Sweater” is kind of stalled, due to my being somewhat disenchanted with it at the moment. It may be abandoned. I’ll listen to it again in a week or two and see how I feel about it. I’m trying to work on a collaboration track with Celibacy Club, but I need to give myself a crash course in Fruity Loops again to make that happen. That’s the problem with electronic music….there can be more barriers to collaboration due to software/hardware issues. Of course, in acoustic-based music, you can’t really collaborate with someone 2 states away anyways, so that’s a moot point. I did find some people locally who are looking to get a music project going, so that might open up some new musical vistas for the moment…

More Later….

Michelle and I headed out to Guerneville for a cool benefit Haunted House, We were originally planning on hitting the Guerneville downtown (Reed advised me to not get raped…so helpful), but things were pretty dead down there, so we headed back into civilization, and ended up at the Tradewinds due to lack of better options. There were some great costumes there, and a pretty tight little funk band was playing, so it was an alright time. I haven’t actually dressed up for Halloween in a while, so that was cool, but I don’t know what I’m going to do with these chaps now….

Well, the subject of cowboys has been raised, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to make an election segue (or does it?). Better, more thoughtful writers have expressed anything I would want to say elsewhere anyways. So I’ll just say this:

FUCK.

Right. So then. I traded Emily my extra wireless card for a home cooked meal the other night (and another meal again this evening), which is a pretty good deal for me. Most of the home cooking I consume involves the microwave or comes out of boxes in foil packets. I have no patience for prearing food. I demand instant gratification. But I’ve certainly got nothing against letting other people make me food. And Emily’s generally good to hang out with anyways.

What else is happening in my life? Not a lot. I’ve got two Airliner tracks in progress that are pretty far along, but I’m feeling somewhat stalled on them. It doesn’t help that I still don’t have Buzz up and running perfectly on my new laptop. Such a fickle little program…it has so many quirks and workarounds. It’s the program I dread installing most on new computers, because there are so many little details that can cause it to crash. I think I’ve got it figured out now though. Which means as soon as I find my inspiration again, I can finish up “Sweater” and “Skirt”. I think that’ll be it for my clothing EP, except that I’m toying with the idea of a remix or two also. Either by me, or others. I guess that’ll depend on if anyone else is interested in remixing one of my songs. I’d like to do a really hip-hop remix of “Panties”, but I haven’t actually started working on that yet.

I’m also re-reading The Crying of Lot 49. I’d like to re-read Gravity’s Rainbow at some point also, but that’s such a time and energy investment. Worthwhile, though. I’m on such a Pynchon kick lately….I’ve been reading what little biographical and critical information I’ve come across on the web, and becoming further and further fascinated by him.

Blah blah. More later, kids….

By the way, this is my first post from my new laptop. It’s about time. The clicking noises my hard drive was making have been really bugging me, and they were especially worse this morning, so I decided to a quick back-up…and I’m glad I did, since I got my favorite error message (Operating System Not Found) shortly thereafter. Oh me oh my.

Finished reading From Hell yesterday, and couldn’t help but think of Libra, another fictional tale based on actual events that I recently finished. Both are fictional “what-ifs” centered around historically significant murders (the Jack the Ripper killings, and the JFK assassination, respectively), that stay very close to historical records, while introducing elements of narrative invention to fill in the gaps in our knowledge. From Hell includes some extensive annotations, detailing departures from historical record and the author’s speculation, as well as a short epilogue describing the evolution of our knowledge of the events as filtered through successive generations of theorists, and the inevitable distortion and loss of the primary sources, through time, distance, and misplaced authority. That short read was almost as interesting as the story proper. I wish there was a set of annotations or meta-narrative for Libra as well. Maybe there is….I’ll have to track it down….

More later…

I tore through Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower this week, after Erin insisted I borrow Morgan’s copy. I highly enjoyed it. It’s one of those fast, easy, and involving reads that sucks you right in, and you find yourself reading a little bit every chance you get. Waiting for the kettle to boil in the morning? Read a few pages. Commercial break during the Daily Show? Read a few pages. Etc. etc., ad infinitum.

Speaking of the Daily Show, Jon Stewart’s recent Crossfire appearance (which is available in text and video forms all over the internets) is the most inspiring and astounding pieces of television I’ve seen in recent memory. More powerful than a locomotive, and more unexpected than an uncontested Florida election result. My hero.

Favorite new website: Girls Are Pretty. It’s genius, I swear it.

This site is such a Livejournal. Did I actually used to write about anything with any substance? Probably not. But it seems like I did at some point. But substance requires effort, and that’s not something I have a good relationship with.

Hmm. A bunch of other stuff happened, but I don’t remember most of it. There’s probably a reason for that. I’ll remember it later. And promptly forget to write about it. Which is probably no huge loss.

And of course, I’ve had a shitload of comics to read lately. I even went so far as to avoid picking up this week’s batch (100 Bullets #51 and Love Fights #11, a good haul, quality wise). But, I finally finished reading the Maxx, which i thought ended really appropriately. It’s a shame that Kieth’s Friends of the Maxx series didnt’ stick around as long as it could have. But really, Zero Girl and it’s sequel fit so well in that vein that it might as well have been part of that series. Different characters, similar themes (especially the bit about shame), and since the Maxx ended with one of many possible universes ending and splitting off into variations, then it could be seen as a new “bubble-universe”. Hmmm.

So Transmetropolitan was pretty disappointing. I like the idea of a comic series centered around a journalist, as it gives the series a real freedom to find different milieu in which to explore, but so much about this book was really uninteresting. The suppporting characters are all pretty wooden, and there’s no insight into anyone’s motivation, except for the occaisional superficial plot device (Spider’s editor likes money! Deep!). The plot had very little tension. I really couldn’t bring myself to care what was going to happen, and didn’t feel like the level of conflict built very convincingly. And the setting was pretty cliche Blade Runner/Neuromancer sci-fi drek. I don’t think I’ll be looking much further into this series.

Played some music with Josh tonight. We kicked around some funk, played a little Radiohead, and chatted about 4-tracking for a while. I haven’t been making music outside of my laptop much lately, so it’s nice to play with someone else every once in a while.

A Ghost is Born is really growing on me. I thought there were a few good tracks at first, and the rest of it didn’t grab me right off the bat, but the more I listen to it, the more I like it. “I’m a Wheel” is the only song I don’t think is absolutely great at this point. The dynamics on this album are really wide, which is great i this age of overcompressed LOUD ROCK ALBUMS. Makes it hard to listen to in the car, but my car speakers are blown anyways. I hope they plan a US tour soon, because I’d love a chance to see them live.

I’ll be off to see the New Trust and the Polar Bears at the Phoenix tomorrow night. Haven’t been there in a while. Should be interesting….

More later….