lacunae

shaking like a willow or a daffodil

2010-03-01T05:31:39Z

Things I've done in the past month: *Reviewed the Canadian hardcore band Fucked Up's Couple Tracks over at Pitchfork *Wrote a couple of pieces over at Thought Catalog, on The Magnetic Fields' Realism and Spider-Man's search for a father substitute (and also covered a Magnetic Fields show for Vulture) *Visited New York City and had a whole lot of meetings with people and saw Saffire, not the "uppity blues women" Saffire but the "awesome very young women who blew the roof off the Willie Mae Rock Camp benefit" Saffire *Wrote a bunch of pieces for Techland, including an ongoing weekly column on comics that's going by the name "Emanata": on The Question #37, on DMZ, on DC's new top dogs (plus an interview with them), on Kick-Ass, on the sources of Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, and on Batman and Robin. And I wrote my first-ever piece in Time proper: a very, very short blurb on the excellent new Joanna Newsom album. *Interviewed the great Kevin O'Neill at length over at The Comics Journal *Saw Richard Thompson play a two-set show here in Portland that was being recorded for a live album: one set of unreleased new material, one of old faves--his songwriting's in steep decline (I was kind of boggled that he wrote a song about Burning Man, and wondered if he'd actually been there), but his guitar playing is actually still getting even better; if there are 24-year-old guitarists who are even vaguely in his neighborhood I'd love to know about them *Discovered that chatroulette is much, much more fun if you do it with a) friends and b) multiple singing puppets I'll keep up more if you keep up more, how's about that?

a strong beat to step to

2010-01-29T22:47:28Z

It's hard to post something without spilling the beans when there are beans to be spilled. But the good news is that I've joined the team over at Time's Techland blog--I'll be writing about comics for them! My first piece for them just went up today: it's on "Wizzywig" and "Footnotes in Gaza." Other recent links with my name attached to them: I wrote about Rakim for Hilobrow, Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary for Barnes & Noble, Siege for the Savage Critic, and a bunch of stuff for eMusic, like this piece on Loveless and its antecedents. Also, I'll be in this book, and maybe another one...! At some point, I plan to develop an interior life, too. My new year's resolution of drinking three glasses of wine a week (this represents a drastic increase, not a decrease) might help with that, I'm thinking.

out of the demo, into the fully functional licensed version

2010-01-04T22:05:58Z

Happy birthday to me! So far I've been celebrating in the traditional way: vegetarian dim sum, karaoke, fruit salad, and being interviewed at length about The Invincible Iron Man by Tom Spurgeon. Can't beat that. I am brewing up some interesting plans for the year and the decade, some of which will be made public before too long.

ten manifestations of culture that got me through the 2000s

2010-01-01T20:38:39Z

For those of you who've asked for a list of some kind: The iPhone M.I.A./Diplo: Piracy Funds Terrorism, Vol. 1 Arrested Development Alison Bechdel: Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic The New Pornographers: Mass Romantic Katamari Damacy David B.: Epileptic "The Beast" Grant Morrison et al.: Seven Soldiers of Victory Kelly Link: "Catskin" (in Magic for Beginners) And now: ONWARD!!

same riff, no apostrophe

2009-12-24T00:57:01Z

The most successful thing I've helped introduce into the kid's life recently: a pair of Mollie Katzen cookbooks, "Pretend Soup" and "Salad People," which are set up so that small children can do most of the cooking themselves and occasionally ask a grown-up to serve as their sous-chef. He made miso-almond dipping sauce (to go with raw vegetables) and popovers for dinner this weekend. They were delicious, and he was very proud of himself. Otherwise: just luxuriating in the end-of-year slowdown, taking care of some tasks that have been waiting to get done for a while, slowly reading through the San Francisco Panorama, prepping a couple of projects that might go live in the new year, and listening to an enormous number of old instrumental soul hits for a secret project. The days are a little too short and dim to be merry and bright at the moment, but I'm working on it.

more activity updates

2009-12-10T20:50:19Z

Over at the Significant Objects project, I've written a short-short story about a travel hair dryer. Go have a look! You can even bid to win the early-'80s-model Conair dryer itself on eBay! Otherwise: I've been writing about comics a lot lately. I did a roundup of some good ones over at the New York Times Book Review last weekend, and picked some of my favorites of this year for the Barnes & Noble Review. And I wrote the liner notes for the excellent Daptone Gold compilation of music from the Brooklyn soul collective Daptone! Also, I apparently have a (tiny) record review (of the Annie album) in the San Francisco Panorama, although I haven't seen it yet...

Kant's "Critique of Aesthetic Judgement": Drastically Abridged Awesome Version

2009-11-24T00:57:43Z

My 5-minute lecture from Ignite Portland 7 last week, for your amusement.

the active life

2009-11-15T01:14:47Z

First up, my fabulous spouse Lisa Gidley has a new small-scale photo blog, Now It's In Your Hands. Those of you who like Polaroids should have a look. Those of you who happen to have large amounts of Polaroid film you're not using should send it to her. Over at Carrie Brownstein's "Monitor Mix" blog at NPR, I wrote a little rant called "The Death of Mistakes Means the Death of Rock," and I'm very flattered by the number of responses it's gotten so far. And I've done a couple of reviews for the Barnes & Noble Review: Dino Buzzati's curious 1969 comics experiment Poem Strip and R. Sikoryak's sly retrospective Masterpiece Comics. Also, I wrote two chapters of Rolling Stone's new book Michael (on Michael Jackson): one about his touring career, one about his significance as a dancer. (Haven't even seen the finished book yet, but I've heard it's out.)

sure you got a chick

2009-11-06T05:49:40Z

One of the things I'm obligated to do by virtue of what I do for a living is keeping an eye on my own taste--noticing what I like and what I don't like, in general. Over the last week or so, as people start to nudge me about various end-of-year music things, I've been noticing that there's a lot of very popular (or very "semipopular," as Xgau puts it) new music that rolls right off me: I don't like it and I don't actively dislike it, I just barely even notice it when it's playing. But there's also a lot of older music that has been totally knocking me flat, some in idioms I didn't pay much attention to even ten years ago (that new Franco collection is just incredible), some that I would've passed over as second- or third-tier a while back. I mean, in some sense I know that the Pointer Sisters' 1975 album Steppin' isn't as special as... a lot of other things, but I picked up a battered copy of the LP at Everyday Music for a few dollars, and I've been wanting to listen to it every day. (Here's its staggeringly great opening track "How Long," an R&B #1 that I swear I have never heard on the radio, and absorbed only via Salt-n-Pepa's "Chick on the Side":) Now, naturally, my job is to figure out why I adore "How Long"--which I heard for the first time last week, so I can't really say I've got a longstanding or situational attachment to it--and can't bring myself to care in more than a theoretical way about "Wasted" or "Fireflies," let alone the albums they belong to. I've got a vague theory; now I have to figure out what would disprove it.

a thing I've come to love about Portland

2009-11-05T00:56:17Z

The local food cart scene, which is halfway between restaurant culture and street food culture. At some point, somebody in Portland realized that an empty lot could be filled with a bunch of trailers, each of which could be a mini-restaurant, serving a very limited menu with very limited seating for relatively low prices. There are a few downtown spots that have had a block full of food carts since we've been in town, like SW 5th between Oak and Stark, but for some reason they've been proliferating like crazy this year. Most are essentially lunch-focused, but some are open for dinner, and the new cart area at SE 12th and Hawthorne specializes in late-night food--a couple of its carts don't even open until 8 PM. Now there's a blog devoted to them; Lisa and I have been checking out some of the newer ones. Enthusiastic thumbs-ups to Wolf & Bear's (Iranian breakfast sandwiches!!) and The Ruby Dragon (Ethiopian/Indian-inspired vegan food!). Apparently there's a new cart, Mum's Kitchen, that serves not just Indian food but South African-style Indian food. I'll report back when I've gotten to try it.

last night's unpleasant dream

2009-11-03T17:01:06Z

I'm by myself in an unfamiliar city, eating in a restaurant. A woman I don't know decides she likes the look of what I'm having, grabs my plate and scrapes half of its contents onto her own. She doesn't understand why I get upset. Neither does the restaurant staff. I throw my plate to the floor, stalk out of the restaurant into the city, and promptly find myself lost. Key nightmare concepts: my own sense of entitlement, others' sense of entitlement, communication failure, squalls of rage, abandoning something small and ending up with a greater loss.

subject alpha activity report

2009-11-03T00:21:32Z

It occurs to me that I should post what-I'm-up-to links-- On November 19, I'll be giving a very brief (5 minutes) lecture as part of Ignite Portland 7. It's free, and should be a lot of fun. (I may also be giving some kind of lecture on the 11th; details to come.) I'm still writing a bunch of reviews over at Pitchfork, most recently the newish Madonna best-of. I wrote about David Small's Stitches over at Bookforum. And I'm continuing to post weekly previews of comics over at Comics Alliance. Lots of other stuff I've been working on is Not Out Yet, I'm afraid, although I'm particularly excited to note that I'll have a tiny little piece in the San Francisco Panorama, which looks to be the single best newspaper ever, and possibly the last.

total win for the modern era

2009-11-01T20:48:58Z

Thanks to everyone who supported me in my successful NaNoBloMo (National No Blogging Month) bid, and congratulations to everyone else who managed to not update their blog in all of October, either. It's tough, but we did it! For the amusement of those of you who don't read the Twitter feed (which uh I couldn't stay away from), here's what I looked like last night for Anina and Paul's annual Halloween shindig, which I'd missed the last few years: (That was one of the very few parties I might have gone to, I'd bet, where at least half the attendees recognized what I was.) Now: on to November!

project omniherbivore: durian

2009-09-21T19:07:22Z

I've always been curious to try eating a durian. For those of you who haven't encountered it, durian's a fruit that's popular in Southeast Asia; I think I first encountered it on an episode of "That's Incredible!" in the '70s, where somebody described it by saying it "tastes like heaven and stinks like hell." I am particularly fond of this Jan Chipchase photo of a karaoke bus; the second of the forbidden things it represents is durian. This weekend, I went to my friends Maegan and Leo's wedding up at Seattle. They had a very impressive banquet at their reception: several dozen dishes, many of them made by their friends, including Ethiopian vegetarian food, a roast whole pig, nasi goreng, and... a durian. It was under a glass dome, but anyone who got close enough to it got a whiff anyway; as promised, it smells like a particularly horrible dumpster full of rotting garbage. But I grabbed a scoop of it, put it on my plate, and immediately shoveled it into my mouth, whereupon as promised it became sweet with some curious savory notes, vaguely floral, and delicious. Then I wiped the remainder off my plate with a napkin so my plate wouldn't smell like it any more. Conclusion: I'd happily eat it again, but I'd have to make sure my nose was plugged first. In other news, I'm doing a couple of panels at this weekend's Small Press Expo in Bethesda, MD: a Q&A with the astonishing C. Tyler, and a critics' roundtable with Rob Clough, Sean Collins, Gary Groth, Chris Mautner, Joe McCulloch, Tucker Stone and Bill Kartalopoulos. It should be fun--come say hi if you're in the area!

near future, recent past

2009-09-10T23:51:07Z

First off, what I'll be up to in about six weeks: giving a lecture on October 23 at the Understanding Superheroes conference at the University of Oregon. I'm on a panel called "Being and Super-Beings: Existentialism, Temporality, and Eschatology," with Beth Davies-Stofka and Jonathan Tanner, and I'm going to be talking about the end of the Fourth World, the beginning of the Fifth, and the retcon as god-bullet. I'll be back at the U. of Oregon, this time at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum, on October 28 to give another lecture, which will be a double feature with one by Peter Coogan; this time, my talk's going to be called "Super-Aesthetics," and it'll be about the overlap (and differences) between good visual art, good cartooning and good superhero cartooning. In the meantime, a few other things I've had published recently: *The piece about criticism and my abuse of poetry for Poetry magazine that I mentioned below, which is now up on their site *A piece for Wired/Ars Technica's "Dual Perspectives" feature about the current state of augmented-reality displays *A review for Pitchfork of the Beatles' Past Masters, and another review of the new Richard Thompson boxed set *A few more brief appreciations over at Hilobrow, including this one, about Ogden Nash, which both uses and cites the word "objurgate"