cut the last sentence

rick moody can write leafy connecticut suburbs as skillfully as post-apocalyptic new york city, but i'm excited to hear that his latest novel (working title THE FOUR FINGERS OF DEATH) promises to be more of the latter, ALBERTINE NOTES variety. also "montese crandall" sounds like a character in a flannery o'connor story....what luck. novel should be out spring 2010. interview, plus moody's "13 rules of revision" here:

NT: Let's talk about your newest novel. Unless you are superstitious, could you talk about what it is about and how long you've been working on it?

RM: Not superstitious, really, but it's a hard book to talk about. It began in two ways: 1) I really love bad, old horror movies, the b-film variety, the drive-in variety, especially from the late fifties and early sixties, which was the period of horror films that I watched a lot as a kid. I just loved them. In this novel, I wanted to try to make my own one of these films, so I picked a particularly embarrassing example, THE CRAWLING HAND (1963), and began adapting it. 2) Meanwhile, I wanted to write a book about the desert, because I have been spending a lot of time in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona in the last ten years. Or, if not a book ABOUT the desert, at least a book LOCATED in the desert. Then (3) if those things weren't enough, I allowed a name from my book to be auctioned off by a first-amendment-related charity in California. The winner, he who paid the top dollar, got to have his name in my book. The winner was one Montese Crandall. Upon having control of this name, which I loved so much, I had to create a context for him in the novel, so he became the narrator and controlling intelligence thereof. In ways that will become clear when you see it. Well, there's another factor, too. (4) I wanted to write a novel in the style of the novels I first loved when I was a teenager, viz.,Vonnegut/Brautigan/Robbins/Pynchon/Dick/Heinlein. It's a sub-literary genre in some cases, but I never care about that sort of thing. I want write into the condition of my early enthusiasm, you know? Anyway, the result is a 900 page comic novel about a disembodied arm set in the desert in 2026.

knit on!

hope everyone has a rad weekend. team ND will be in topanga, soaking up rays, crushing waves, and communing with nature.
fort ticonderoga mix



fergus and geronimo - tell it (in my ear)
kurt vile - freeway
the hot tickets - dancing with francis
devendra - get off your high horse
the love language - providence
tuneyards - providence
cat stevens - miles from nowhere
fleetwood mac - i know i'm not wrong
dan rossen - waterfall (judee sill cover)
the oh sees - ship
ganglians - voodoo
dirty projectors - temecula sunrise
highlife - f kenya rip

one word for your fans? astronaut.

jon carling's drawings remind me of untold hours spent in my mom's libraries as a kid. contemplating purchasing the bobby d. "tarantula '66" print for the promise of personalized envelope and extras. nothing beats mail art.

the native american word for internet

the only thing these videos have in common is that they're awesome.

"Streaming Gradient" by Jen Stark from Jen Stark on Vimeo.

(note rod stewart's amazing line at the beginning ~40second mark "you've met string have you?")

no message could have been any clearer

i tell people sgt. pepper's was my first album, but really it was bad and i distinctly remember sitting down to write out the lyrics to man in the mirror by stopping and starting the tape for an hour. this was before i realized liner notes existed. i'd give anything to have those handwritten lyrics right now. rip.

and then we came to the end

thankfully my "office" now consists of a lawnchair on the roof of the alamo. yet my year in the corporate world was recent and regrettable enough that this art still totally resonates. made entirely of office supplies by david fullerton:

and you sir...in the eye patch?...i love it

not much of a wilco "fan" per se, but last they put on one of the finer shows i've seen lately at the wiltern. the combination of an appropriate venue and a pretty flawless set list won me over early on. tweedy dropped incredible banter, nels cline absolutely shredded and kotche looked like he'd taken a shower with his clothes on by the end of his stint behind the skins. they opened with live favorite via chicago which was professionally captured in the video below. there's no reason for the camera on anyone other than glenn around 2:10, 3:25 or 4:00.



This is a quote from a recent interview with jeff, which i love. really humble, but i think also very basic and relatable. every time a wilco track irks me for being a little too palatable, i think of this quote and forgive it.

"What keeps you writing songs?

It doesn’t hurt anybody. It’s something I love to do, and it doesn’t hurt anybody. And the world probably doesn’t need any more songs, but I need more songs. It’s satisfying and lovely to do. I feel better, and as a band—I think I can speak for everyone—we feel better making something that wasn’t there ten minutes ago. Whatever spirit there is in the universe, I think that puts you closer to it. The act of creation, you know, it’s a very powerful thing, and very gratifying. I wish it on everyone. I wish everyone could enjoy making something that wasn’t there before."

does anyone remember laughter?

apatow's upcoming funny people features a slew of fake studio comedies starring sandler's character george simmons. today a bunch of mock one sheets were released. have to appreciate the attention to detail in them especially in the billing block. the regulars are included on every front. with actors there's rudd (in every one), jonah hill, jay baruchel, catherine keener... and producers include carrell, robertson, jon poll. humble too that apatow puts his own name at the helm of these flicks.

i wish the ideas were a little funnier (though re-do and sayonara davey somehow manage to elicit a legitimate chuckle), its sad how easy these are to not just mock up one sheets for, but imagine as actual releases. if anything, they're not absurd enough. too close for comfort.

the other half is what we do

truly top notch mail deliveries today.

first up - the california surf project.
two guys, one photographer and one pro surfer, drove the length of the cali coastline surfing all the way and documenting the experience. sounds pretty ideal.















a very exciting addition to the surf/coffee table book collection. but it's hard to top this:



highly anticipated would be the understatement of the century.

to quote from devendra's opening remarks: "the heart draws in love. love draws the heart in. thank you forever. love above all. onward - devendra banhart, tuesday afternoon, bolinas"

i think dev obsession may be reaching boiling point...

t. allen fenway will be there, will you?

alex cornell designed a branding campaign for a hypothetical wes anderson film festival in austin, texas. i'd sold. look close...he nails the details.

Wes Anderson Trailer from Alex Cornell on Vimeo.

soundtrack




dvd set

catalog


other awesome stuff

while you still see more than you used to see

when has the nytimes not crushed it? between great pieces on zach g and the merits of manual labor it's been hard to keep up. these harlem in flux photos are stand outs for me.

i only ever want to go out here:


buy vinyl here:


and get my hair braided here:


also, some recent updates to flickr gallery here. shots include evidence of pretty heavy beachside living and the immortalized dev b. coachella performance. wish i'd had a zoom lens for the olympus at this show. in the man's words: "love is the light igniting and everyone is on fire."

i told them i was the editor of a famous etiquette book

happy birthday bobby d

"A person is a success if they get up in the morning and gets to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do."















(btw can't believe i've never youtube'd bob dylan up till now. treasure trove).

what about the night makes you change

hasty posting on asp's part below. nd's getting a little music video heavy these days, but here's another one to sort of compensate for weirdness below. the song: 10am automatic. the band: black keys. the director: david cross. the guest star: jon mothereffing glaser. black keys looks totally different than they do now. ah. youth.

quarter half the mile

haven't even watched it yet.

Two Weeks

you're right, it's true

chalk me up as a sucker for found footage compilation music videos like this new one for crystal stilts.



this is the quintessential example by roman coppola. much more deliberate assembly here.

well that settles it

i desperately want an alaia board. perfect for novel designs' neo-luddite leanings. doesn't it look like surfing on a snowboard? or, you know... a plank of driftwood!

Tom's Creation Plantation Trailer from Cyrus Sutton on Vimeo.

that's a mysterious occupation

been making some solid vinyl purchases as of late. the collection just passed the one hundred albums mark (104 now). new/overdue additions include:

you can't think of nothing

on a big eric rohmer kick at the moment. between l'amour d'apres-midi and la collectionneuse i'm a confirmed fan. his remaining four moral tales have been pushed to the top of my netflix. below are the screen captures from the interstitials/credit and title cards of la collectionneuse, showing rohmer enjoying the availability of color in his first non-black and white film. one other interesting tidbit, every shot in the film was done in one take (the shooting ratio was a remarkable 1.5:1). even more incredible given nestor almendros' beautiful cinematography on 16mm (a format mandated by rohmer to keep costs down). makes you think about all that film stock going to waste out there...

this is water

time has posted the "ten best commencement speeches" aggregating some legendary words of wisdom in one place

1) Steve Jobs - really practical, if pretty macabre - "Stay hungry, Stay foolish"

2) Conan O'Brien - i've posted this before, it's a delight - "Fall down, make a mess, break something occasionally"

3) Simon Baker - i'd never read this before, so brilliant - three favorites because it's new to me: "Being dumb is not the worst thing in the world, but letting your clothes shout it out loud depresses the neighbors and embarrasses your parents. " / "It's good for the soul to hear yourself as others hear you, and next time maybe, just maybe, you will not talk so much, so loudly, so brilliantly, so charmingly, so utterly shamefully foolishly." / "Sleep in the nude."

4) Winston Churchill - time description nails it, this is a battle cry - "You cannot tell from appearances how things will go."

5) George Marshall - dry stuff indeed. not particularly quotable but - "An essential part of any successful action on the part of the United States is an understanding on the part of the people of America of the character of the problem and the remedies to be applied."

6) JFK - this is like a state of the union speech - "the peace is not secure because the freedom is incomplete."

7) Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford) -brimming with lemon lyman charm, good old "whitty" drops some pleasant knowledge and a billy madison reference - "You've got to want to do whatever you want to do more than you want to be whatever you want to be"

8) Barbara Kingsolver - hadn't read this before either and really loved it - "Wisdom is like frequent-flyer miles and scar tissue; if it does accumulate, that happens by accident while you’re trying to do something else."

9) Stephen Colbert - mostly just one liners, albeit great ones - "There are so many challenges facing this next generation, and as they said earlier, you are up for these challenges. And I agree, except that I don't think you are. I don't know if you're tough enough to handle this. You are the most coddled generation in history. I belong to the last generation that did not have to be in a car seat. You had to be in car seats. I did not have to wear a helmet when I rode my bike. You do. You have to wear helmets when you go swimming, right? In case you bump your head against the side of the pool. Oh, by the way, I should have said, my speech today may contain some peanut products."

and

10) of course, DFW. i could post the whole address. should. buy it amazon. it works in that suspect one line per page format. if i had any semblance of daily discipline i'd read it every morning. hard to extract but here goes -
"A huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. Here's one example of the utter wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely talk about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness, because it's so socially repulsive, but it's pretty much the same for all of us, deep down. It is our default-setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: There is no experience you've had that you were not at the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is right there in front of you, or behind you, to the left or right of you, on your TV, or your monitor, or whatever. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real -- you get the idea. But please don't worry that I'm getting ready to preach to you about compassion or other-directedness or the so-called "virtues." This is not a matter of virtue -- it's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default-setting, which is to be deeply and literally self-centered, and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self."

is this better than what we're already working on?

the last song/post reminds me of this old classic now that i think of it. this version remains the best i've heard. too bad pj never recaptured the energy from their early post-mookie blaylock days. pretty dull on the old proscenium.

we stuck around cause nobody wanted to die

cap tipped off here we go way back when. video isn't much to see but it's a blast to listen to. luke temple...smart dude. waiting on a live video for everything's big. credit to dbs for g-reader share.

take a stress pill and think things over

it's been two days and i'm still reeling from seeing a 70mm print of 2001: a space odyssey on sunday night. so much so that i sat through the flat out terrible sequel 2010 and read the synopses of 2061 and 3001, the third and fourth installments of arthur c. clarke's space odyssey series, last night to satisfy my craving for more. such attempts only served to further drive home how incredible kubrick's film it. i won't go into the how's and why's of the film's awesomeness. as i've learned in the last 48 hours through my own frenetic online research, there's more than enough analysis and written appreciation. i'd seen it once before on dvd (might even have been vhs it was so long ago) and i feel like i saw an entirely different film on the big screen. seek it out. it's worth it. because every frame of the film is meticulously composed and captivatingly deliberate i may be going overboard with these screen captures. who cares. i can not get enough.

ah! see? complete control!

so negligent in posting. this should make up for it though:

if you have a good acid trip you conclude that

in this li'l interview devendra drops countless gems from describing the "freak folk" scene with different bands comprising various elements of a beachside paradise (antony is the palm tree with hanging suns instead of coconuts) to explaining how drawings become songs and vice versa. it's so damn earnest and because it's dev you can't help but dig it. oh he also suggests he might stop putting out albums. this was shot almost three years ago.



pics from this show to come.

no matter where it went, no matter who listened

i've revisited this song "hatari" pretty regularly since hearing it amidst tune-yards sxsw buzz a few months back. really the thing to do with this song is just listen to it and try to imagine how it's played and by whom. the chances of predicting the actual artist, merill garbus, are just about nil. rhythmically and melodically this song continues to blow me away and the fact it was recorded on free/gifted software entirely by garbus (deliberately so it would all be hers) is really admirable, even if it absolutely sounds like it was recorded on a dictaphone. it's part of the charm and, as it turns out, selling her diy cassette tapes has resulted in turning a tidy profit. the video below is a stripped down version of the track but it's still captivating.