Syntax of Things

Lost and Found Again

Remember a few days ago when I complained that something was conspiring against me, that despite my happiness at being able to see Wilco it meant that I would have to miss Ferlinghetti who was appearing the same night?  Well, like my mama always says, things have a way of working out for the best.*  Thanks to the fine folks at the marvelous La Jolla bookstore D.G. Willis, Ferlinghetti made a second--and free--appearance in San Diego, so I was able to see my favorite band and favorite living poet on consecutive nights.  More on both later.

The only negative to both events was getting to them.  Both were in La Jolla, and somehow, just as with the Lethem reading last November, I managed to get lost.  It's not that big of a place and I've been to both venues before, but, to keep a long story short, I somehow lose my sense of direction west of I-5.  I think it may be because of my general dislike of La Jolla, the fact that you must have a certain credit ranking to gain entrance, and perhaps the Dios de La Jolla don't take to kindly to the mocking.

*Mom attributes this to the Good Lord; I'm more in the "blind squirrel finding an acorn" camp.

T Minus Two Hours

Wilco, tonight, I'm happy.  Photo above from the newly domiciled Chromwaves Frank.

Soup Strainers

I spent most of yesterday afternoon working on a hard-hitting post that I think you'll really enjoy, but I missed the editorial deadline so it will have to wait until next week.  Instead, please enjoy one of the funniest things I've read in a long time:  Major League Baseball's All Porn Mustache Team.  Here are a couple of the players listed and a brief description:

Dickie Thon, Shortstop:  Let me get this straight… his first name is Dickie, and he has that mustache to boot!  Perfect.  Speaking of boots, Thon muffed his fair share of ground balls as a journeyman middle infielder, but on this squad his mustache is an all-star.

Paul Assenmacher, Relief Pitcher:  The Ass Maker is one tough customer. Looking at that mustache, this is one lefty you don’t want to see coming out of the pen. He also was in the majors for four or five hundred years. Near the end of his career, a tired and weary Ass Man sported his ‘someone please kill me now’ mojo while toeing the rubber for the Tribe.

See also: The NBA's All-Ugly Team

{via Little Toy Robot}

Madge Meme

Today's horoscope told me that if I want a life of riches I should stop being a "player hater."  Confused by this implication, I decided to do a little soul searching in order to figure out just what player I hated.  While the answer may be obvious to those close to me, it took me a while to come up with the one person--or player--that I strongly dislike more than any other:  Madonna.  It didn't help that just today I read that her husband had cut her cameo appearance completely out of his next film, Revolver.  And that despite her best efforts and her obvious pull, her latest documentary has been deemed too poor to merit a showing at Cannes.  This all was headed to a "breaking news" post at SoT when I recalled the advice of my horoscope.

Then I remembered a meme that I spotted a few days ago.  The instructions were to take some song lyrics and, using Google's Language Tools, translate the lyrics from English to French then to German then back to English.  That's when I decided to come to terms with my Madonna loathing.  I would take a few of her songs and give them the meme treatment.  After all, isn't that the ultimate sign of respect?  The results are mixed, with the lyrics for both songs barely recognizable after the translations.  Truth (or dare) be known, though, these were barely recognizable as lyrics to begin with:

Pâté of the Dog

I finally got my hands on a copy of the Spring edition of the Oxford American--the "Southern Food Issue."  Being a sucker for good southern cuisine, especially the dishes found in diners scattered along backwoods two-lane highways, with all of its fried and meat-saturated goodness, I was interested in seeing how dumplings and okra and raccoon would be celebrated by the literati.  My favorite essay so far is George Singleton's hilarious "An Ode to Hangover Cures." Here's an excerpt:

In the past--yeah, yeah, yeah, I just went through rehab, so trust me that I'm clearheaded and slightly rational on the following recipe--I started many a day with what I called Poor Man's Pâté Surprise.  I minced a can of Vienna sausages as fine as possible (a blender would work best, but remember, the damn noise could kill you) and threw them into a blue-speckled, enamelware mixing bowl.  Then, recklessly and without rubber gloves, I minced one medium jalapeño and one orange habenero, then threw them on top of the Viennas, seeds and all.  During particularly vile, rabid, tenacious hangovers, I always hoped that the pepper seeds would lodge in my intestinal tract, cause diverticulitis, and kill me.

Then I added about two tablespoons of mayo, two squirts of yellow mustard, and a couple teaspoons of sweet-pickle relish.  I hand-whipped the concoction with a wooden spoon and served it atop saltine crackers, or between two slices of white Sunbeam bread.  I never officially recorded the outcome, but it seemed as if my hands would start burning uncontrollably about the same time that I could see again through the tears.  Granted, my hangover remedy might be on the same level as a guy who bangs his thumb with a hammer so he forgets about his gout, but what the hell.  By the time I knew what was going on, my headache had disappeared.

Getting Through Wednesday

Wish I could offer more, but it's one of those leechy sorta days:

+ The King's castle goes commercial.  This one made me tear up (Real).

+ Largehearted boy has launched yet another amazing feature on his site: Note Books, "a weekly feature where musicians will stop by and write a short piece on their current reading, influential books, or literary leanings."  John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats is up first.

+ Chromewaves Frank has the Mountain Goats covering "The Boys Are Back in Town" available for download.  Check the Radio portion of his site and click on the photo of the band.

+ I've broken 500 twice.  Test your Guess-the-Google skills.

+ The more I read about the "Chabon hoax" scandal, the more I'm confused.   

+ Kirkus has a review of James Frey's new effort, My Friend Leonard:  "A story of post-rehab, post-prison that's about as comforting as a sawn-off shotgun with a dark angel in attendance." {via Rake}

+ Finally, does anyone know if there happens to be something in the good book concerning the relationship between the end of the world and exploding frogs?  Just want to know if I should start heading for the bunker.

This Came In Handy Today

 

I Think It's the Red Button for Off

Call me a skeptic, but I believe the Turn Off TV Week campaign will have about as much effect on the general public's television-watching habits as the National Smokeout Day has on my nicotine addiction.  Don't get me wrong, most days I would love to throw a brick through the one-eyed monster, but then I remember that the Braves will be coming on in a few hours or that All in the Family will help me laugh myself to sleep or that Myth Busters will have an all new episode this Wednesday.  Then I put the brick down and settle into my couch with remote in hand.  The TV always wins.

Still, I'd like to imagine a whole week without television. If the people behind the campaign are right, I might get so much done that I will forever swear off the 200 channels of instant entertainment.  So I sat down to make a list of possible things I might accomplish this week if I were to participate in TV Turn-Off Week:

Chronicled

From the city with a mayor who was recently named one of the worst in the nation who just resigned less than six months after beginning his controversial second term in office, Bob Dylan fans will be happy to know that a new musical about the singer's life will be launched in San Diego with the aim to take it ultimately to Broadway.

Justifications Justified

Got this idea from Gwenda and decided to apply it to a book that is currently on my "to read" list.  Here's the 100 most frequently used words in the abridged version of William T. Vollmann's Rising Up and Rising Down:

act  again  against  almost  always  another  authority  away  between  brown  calculus  came  cannot  case  class  come  course  day  death  defense  does  down  end  enemy  even  example  fact  find  first  friend  get  give  go  good  government  gun  hand  himself  honor  itself  justifications  justified  kill  know  law  life  little  long  man  may  means  men  might  moral  mr  muslim  must  new  nothing  now  old  once  order  others  own  peasants  people  perhaps  place  police  power  pulo  right  rule  said  say  see  should  soldiers  stalin  state  still  take  thing  think  three  time  two  upon  violence  violent  vollmann  want  war  whose  william  without  words  world  years

Check out more stats on the book, including its readability index, here.

I Started A Landslide in my Ego

The folks at the SoT home office have granted my request for an extension to my weekend with the caveat that I give three observations about the weekend I'm extending:

Woody Allen's new effort, Melinda and Melinda, was okay.  Pretty typical Allen for the most part.  Will Ferrell's foray into serious acting, if you want to call his role in this picture serious, was also just okay.  Maybe it's me, but I can't look at Ferrell without seeing the president.  Perhaps he did too good of a job with that particular imitation.  Anyway, by about midpoint of this flick, I kept wanting to check the score of the Braves game on the cellphone and thinking of what I was going to order at California Pizza Kitchen, so I may have missed some poignant moments which would have made me care what happened to most of the characters in this movie.  SoT recommends:  await the DVD.

I picked up Denis Johnson's short novel The Stars at Noon for a quick re-read this weekend and soon realized that unless I originally read this during a blackout period of my alcoholism I've actually never read it before.  That said, I'm having a little trouble getting through this book despite its brevity.  I chalk this up not to the narrator nor to the subject matter but to the fact that somewhere in the first two dozen pages Johnson makes reference to a Laura Branigan song and I now I can't get it out of my head.  Has that ever happened to anyone else?  Will it go away?

I've mentioned the recent bad run of car troubles which have ended up costing me over $900 just this month.  Well, we have a new car.  The only catch, the car is sitting in my parents' driveway in Alabama.  This means I'll be bumping up the much anticipated and needed vacation a few weeks, flying to the 'rents (with a brief stop in Atlanta to catch a Braves game), then driving the car back to San Diego.  2,000 miles on the road, 1,000 of those in Texas.  I'll be reconsidering the route to see if I can prevent spending so much time in the Lone Star State.  Stay tuned.

Monorail!

Fox is running a Simpsons rerun tonight so they can bring you American Top 40 with Ryan Seacrest.  Don't we get enough of that guy during the week?  And what happened to Kasey?  Anyway, if you want to spend that time enjoying something Simpsons related, check out this site which contains all the songs ever performed on the show. 

+ Homer sings "Radar Love"
+ End credits by Sonic Youth

Ask Dr. SoT: The Weekend Edition

I'm always comforted by the constant pursuit of researchers and academics to find that everything, no matter how seemingly innocent, can and will lead to something tragic.  One day we will find out that having a lemonade stand as a child could result in the child becoming a serial killer later in life.

So what should be avoided now?  If you're a parent of a little girl, you might want to consider her choice of fairy tale.  Cognitive therapist Susan Darker-Smith's study, entitled "The Tales We Tell Our Children: Overconditioning of Girls to Expect Partners to Change," claims that little girls who enjoy fairy tales such as Cinderella and Snow White run the risk of being victims of domestic violence as adults.  Or as Darker-Smith puts it, ""They believe if their love is strong enough they can change their partner's behaviour. Girls who have listened to such stories as children tend to become more submissive in their future relationships."

Pre-order your baby bubble now.
 

Have a Day, Earth

Louisiana's state flower: the Chem Blossom.

What the hell happened to Earth Day? 

Remember 1990, the twentieth anniversary, when the day received huge media attention, when almost every television network aired some sort of "Save the Earth" program?  Remember VH1 and its all-weekend marathon of enviro-friendly programming with the likes of then VJ Rosie O'Donnell leading a parade of celebrities through videos and PSAs to encourage activism, to suggest that we all think global, act local?

Back then I was a college freshman, a vegetarian, a budding activist who cared, who still dreamed he could make a difference.  I avoided Styrofoam, I didn't wear leather, I lobbied and protested, I listened to R.E.M.  I was a dollop of patchouli and some Birkenstocks away from being a full-fledged hippie.

Fifteen years later, I still harbor some of those sensitivities.  Though I now eat plenty of meat and wear leather on occasions, I keep in touch with the hippie in me by monitoring current issues in environmental politics.  I'm nowhere close to being an activist anymore.  I think sometime in the mid-nineties when I was hanging around with a bunch of nihilists I threw my hands up in despair. My bright eyes turned bloodshot and I decided that my quixotic pursuits were driving me to an early grave.  Ok, I admit it, I let the real, mean world pollute my idealism. 

So today is Earth Day.  Maybe I'll stop for a few minutes and smell one of the roses growing in front of my house or perhaps I'll eat only veggies tonight for dinner.  I wonder what Rosie O' will be doing.

Morning Becomes Decemberists

I might lose my unofficial Decemberists fansite union card if I don't point out that the band made an appearance on KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic this morning.  As always, the fine folks at the station have made the audio and video available for us to enjoy (in Real formats).   I'll keep an eye out for the inevitable mp3 downloads.

Parasites Like Me

The days of wearing dirty socks have come to an end.  The landlord has delivered on her promise to replace the fire-hazard washer-dryer, so we are now equipped to handle the two dozen loads of assorted clothes that have piled in all the corners of the apartment.  That means I have chores, so enjoy a few items while I sort:

+ Ever wondered what Colin Meloy was doing or what he sounded like in his pre-Decemberists days? The excellent blog You Ain't No Picasso can help you out.  {First spotted by my wife, so she gets all the credit.}

+ Also on You Ain't No Picasso, the Shins do Austin City Limits.

+ The fact that National Geographic plans to film the inside of tornado makes this certified weather spotter giddy.

+ Also from Digital Spy: there will be another season of Black Adder.

+ I keep meaning to mention that my good friend Geoff has moved Ducksnorts over to the all-baseball.com Most Valuable Network.  Drop by, check on the Padres, and say hello.  And yes, Geoff, I still think the Pads will win the West. 

+ You've been wanting to diet, but you can't figure out one that will work for you.  Dr. SoT recommends opening this link just before eating.  Guaranteed results. {NSFW; via}

420

I want to post this before the day is over so that you can use the information to impress your stoner friends, or at least set them straight on their facts.  Snopes has the 411 on 420.

Spurious etymologies and uncertain definition aside, '420' has slipped into a position of semi-respectability within the English lexicon. Various free-wheeling cities annually celebrate "hemp fests" on April 20. There's a 4:20 record label in California, and a band called 4:20. Atlanta's Sweetwater Brewing Co. sells its 420 Pale Ale in supermarkets and opens its doors to the public at 4:20 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays. New York's 420 Tours sells low-cost travel packages to the Netherlands and Jamaica. Highway 420 Radio broadcasts "music for the chemically enhanced." And in 2001, the forReal.org web site of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Center for Substance Abuse Prevention put out a public service document titled, "It's 4:20 — Do You Know Where Your Teen Is?"

And not to be a downer, but it's also Hitler's birthday and the anniversary of the Columbine shooting.

Can't Lose for Winning

Murphy's Law as it applies to me:  Buy a ticket to see one of your favorite bands and find out that one of your favorite poets will be making an appearance in town on the very same night.  Yep, while I'm standing in line to get a good spot near the stage for Wilco's show, Lawrence Ferlinghetti will be performing as part of the 12th annual Border Voices Poetry Fair at San Diego State. 

This Ferlinghetti poem applies:

A Fortunate Misfortune

One of the very few times I've ever enjoyed a Madonna song was when I saw John Wesley Harding cover "Like a Prayer" in concert many years ago.   Harding was an engaging, funny, and highly entertaining troubadour who ended up being the highlight of an otherwise forgettable show (the Ocean Blue and the Mighty Lemon Drops were the headliners), and I did my best to follow his musical career after that night.  After a while, though, he sort of disappeared from my radar.  Now I'm reading that Harding, otherwise known as Wesley Stace, has been in the writing business for several years.  From this description of his novel Misfortune, it almost sounds as if Stace has been collaborating with Colin Meloy, as the two seem to tread down the same thematic paths:

Stace's novel, "Misfortune", is the story of a baby rescued from a cinder heap and raised in the richest household in 1820s England. Eccentric Lord Loveall welcomes the chance to replace his long-dead sister and christens the child Rose. The twist? The loveliest heiress on Blighty's shores happens to be a boy. The jolts that follow Rose's unveiling make for a period page-turner that its author characterizes as "hardcore Masterpiece Theatre."

But you have to remember that this is not just a novelist.  This is John Wesley Harding of 13 albums who has played with the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Robyn Hitchcock and Peter Buck.  Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the advanced copies of the novel came with an otherwise unavailable CD of "chapters and verses" featuring two readings and three songs by the writer.  Lucky for us, Stace has made them available on his Web site.  Here's my favorite, "The Ballad of Miss Fortune."

I'm the Man Who Loves Them

Although they continue to occupy the top spot on my favorite bands list, I haven't had much to say about Wilco in quite some time.  There has been plenty of news, some interviews, and an appearance by Jeff Tweedy on a panel with Lawrence Lessig to discuss "file sharing, free culture, and the arts" but I've not mentioned anything about the band in months. In fact, it was all I could do not to post this Tweedy quote from a recent interview:

Punk rock did a lot of damage.  It leveled the playing field for a lot of ugly people and let musicians express themselves, which I'm all for. But it did a lot of psychological damage. It threw the baby out with the bathwater and caused this dismissive either/or mentality towards musicianship. People of my generation are still recovering from that. My favorite quote on the topic is that the avant-garde is the only area of art that actually stays the same.

Truth is, I've been a little miffed at my favorite band.  I get this way when I feel like I've been cheated, and the fact that Wilco decided to play two mid-week dates in L.A., both of which quickly sold out, and ignored those of us in San Diego altogether qualifies as being cheated.  That's why I've been ignoring them, and this led to a huge and somewhat costly mistake on my part.  See, along with ignoring them on this site, I've also been neglecting to check their home page.  Because of this, I didn't know that the band was going to play a show at UC-San Diego at the end of April.  The show had to be listed under an assumed name--Catseye--and could not be advertised thanks to some sort of contractural obligation having to do with their appearance at Coachella that same weekend.  Tickets were made available to UCSD students and Wilco fanclub members, but by the time my ever-alert wife told me about it--she wasn't ignoring them--the show had sold out.

This left me at the mercy of the Craigslist vultures, and sure enough, the cheapest ticket I was able to find was three times its face value.  But because it is Wilco, and because I want to see the new lineup, I caved, making this the most I've ever spent to see a concert, more even than U2.

That's what I get for my lack of faith.

Expect more Wilco news here in the coming days.

Calculating

Talk about your schizophrenia: Check out MathFiction, a site that collects significant mathematical references in fiction.  Here's part of the entry for Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time:

A whole chapter is devoted to The Monty Hall Problem. Towards the end of this chapter, Christopher remarks that "logic can help you work out the right answer." Rather ironically (though the irony will probably be unnoticed by the vast majority of readers), Christopher's answer is wrong, because he assumes (an unstated assumption - very sloppy for someone who aspires to be a mathematician!) that all six theoretically possible outcomes are equally likely. Once you accept that this is not necessarily so, all the mathematical reasoning becomes completely worthless: it all hinges on whether you think the game show host (presumably Monty Hall himself?) is trying to help you or prevent you from winning the car. If the former, then you should definitely switch (if he's wholeheartedly trying to help, he won't offer the possibility of switching if you've already made the right choice); if the latter then you definitely shouldn't. And the only way to determine whether the host is being helpful or not is by using all the things that Christopher is unable to cope with - nuances of voice, body language, and a basic understanding of game show economics and the motivation of game show hosts.

This site is a great distraction, especially when you are watching your favorite baseball team's putrid offense blow an amazing performance by their new franchise pitcher.

{via MeFi}

Queens of the Southern Age

Gwenda of Shaken & Stirred and Carrie of Tingle Alley, two members of the Souther Bloggers Cabal and two of my favorite bloggers, took part in an interesting round-table discussion about Southern women writers and labels.  Definitely worth your time.

Coming soon at SoT: a self-interview in which I discuss the exiled Southern blogger and the problem with grits.

The Kerouac Project: Kerouac's Early Years

I had hoped to be able to spend some uninterrupted weeks of reading and thinking on the Kerouac Project, but like most things in my life right now, the project has been pushed to the back burner more often than not.  Nevertheless, I've managed to finish the first two books, Atop an Underwood and Orpheus Emerged.  Neither of these works would convince a newcomer to Kerouac that his writings are worthy of further pursuit.  In fact, if I were to recommend anything in the early stages of formulating a Kerouac theory, it would be to leave these two aside until finishing the more savory Kerouac novels.

Atop an Underwood is a collection of early Kerouac essays and story fragments, some dating back to his early teens.  Many of the selections are downright unreadable, serving only to show the genesis of some of the tropes of Kerouac's later works.  One does get a glimpse of the artist as a very young man writing mock newspaper accounts of horse racing, developing his own type of fantasy baseball league, and dreaming of one day traveling west.

+ NY Times review and excerpts from the collection

I first read Orpheus Emerged several years ago when it was released in e-book only format.  I read it again last year when it came out in hardcopy  and now for the third time as part of this project.  Kerouac wrote this short novel at the age of twenty-three, not long after meeting Ginsberg and Burroughs and some of the other characters that would make up the Beat Generation.  In fact, the characters of this novel are loosely veiled versions of the friends Kerouac had in his Columbia days and a reader of Kerouac's many biographies will catch glimpses of some of the incidents that shaped the man later in life.

For a nice sample of Orpheus Emerged in audio format, go here for an mp3 of Eric Jenson reading from the book.

Up next, Town and the City.

Guest Blogger

Fry It Up in a Pan

You should have seen this one coming: the workload this week has become unbearable and I'm feeling taxed on tax day.  So I'm left without time or energy to get anything of value out today.  That said, I would like to throw all of my weight behind this effort.  If anyone wants to sign me up, I'll be forever in your debt.

If not, I'll build and download something to make me think that with a little internet magic I could be happy all the time.