nah pop, no style

1. Google Reader is making my life way easier — I got pretty behind on my blog-reading recently because I’m especially busy with work and schoolwork and even using Sage is kind of unwieldy. Things just got much wieldier.

2. The new issue of Reconstruction is all about blogging. I haven’t read it all yet, but danah boyd’s article about defining blogging is good, and important for any of us interested in studying this stuff. There appears to be an article that deals a lot with the exact stuff I want to study next semester in my independent study course, as well. Uh oh. (I don’t think it’s precisely the same, though.)

3. Has anyone else noticed that June is getting rather out of hand in this latest development in “Rex Morgan, M.D.”? She’s bound to get served when Niki’s working mom gets home from a tough day at the meth lab. Especially if her pathetic loser drug addict boyfriend is in tow. And regardless of all the circumstances, who takes a kid into his own apartment and tells him to clean up, besides his parent/guardian? You’re overstepping your boundaries, m’lady, and I don’t feel for you if you incur someone else’s wrath for it.

Sometimes I think it’s funny that in my house we tend to put flyers for our events and our friends’ events on our refrigerator or on the wall in our front hallway. Then something like this happens and it reminds me that it’s a great idea:

Tonight I went to a friend’s house to study and in the kitchen on the bulletin board saw a flyer for a lecture tomorrow at the Fine Arts Auditorium at Pitt (a block from my workplace) given by Gayatri Spivak. Like, Subaltern Studies, feminist/deconstructionist Gayatri Spivak. A pretty famous really smart critic/theorist. I would’ve never known about this had I not seen that flyer on the wall in my friend’s house.

There are lots of ways to communicate, all of which have their beautiful little triumphs. Keep putting flyers up inside your house, keep blogging, keep talking. It’s a good way to be.

Some quick things:

• Last night, “A Charlie Brown Christmas” was followed up by a half-hour series of Christmas-related Peanuts vignettes, many of which were somewhat torturous but some of which were hilarious — Sally wakes Charlie Brown in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve to report that she had a dream in which she had visions of sugar plums then asks what a sugar plum is. He explains that it’s a type of candy and Sally says, “Oh, good. I was afraid I was freaking out.” Exeunt. At least, it was funny at the time.
• Cheez-it has introduced their own brand of EZ-Cheese stuff, which I naturally picked up to try because it said “Cheez-it” on the label.
  For whatever reason, I thought it would be better than other EZ-Cheese stuff, but it of course was not. Who decided it would be a wise idea to enter the canned process cheese food market in 2006? Hasn’t this product been washed-up for twenty years? Is there an EZ-Cheese revival coming that I wasn’t warned of? Regardless, I’ll admit that there’s something comforting about a little canned cheese stuff on a saltine. I wasn’t too pleased when I let it mar my soft pretzel, though.

• Thursday is day one of December 2006, and is the day it’s threatening to get cold and possibly snow a little. If that’s not proof of a benevolent creator who uses the Julian calendar, I don’t know what is. I will bust out the Sigur Ros albums and adjust my other behaviors accordingly.
• It’s December, which means get ready to list things that were good about this year. Maybe things that were bad, too. I haven’t decided what format I’ll use for that this year. I should’ve bookmarked good posts on other people’s blogs for the year so I could list them. I’m not going back over a year’s worth of blogging from all of my favorite people just to make a list, sorry. Maybe I’ll do that next year. Resolution number one.

Okay, folks. It’s time. Say what you will about the rest of the holiday, I really love animated Christmas specials. Let’s let down our critical guard for a moment and look at what we might enjoy this season. Just for you (and for me, so that I can just check back here when I want to know what’s on in a give week), I distill the Post-Gazette’s list of holiday specials down to what’s crucial:

• Tuesday, November 28: “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” ABC, 8:00. I’ve said it in this spot before and I’ll say it again: that moment when Linus gives the lecture on what Christmas is really about, Charlie Brown, is the moment of the year when I kinda almost wish I still believed heartily in all that. This is a must-watch yearly. We don’t get WTAE very well, but I’ll rig up the rabbit ears and/or go to someone else’s house and make this happen.
• Tuesday, December 5: “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town,” ABC, 8:00. A classic Rankin-Bass with some wonderful songs: “Put One Foot in Front of the Other” gets stuck in my head in a sort of awful way, but that’s okay. The Burgomeister Meisterberger’s number about banning toys and there being no more toymakers to the king is my fave, though. I don’t think this one has been on network TV the past few years — good to see they’ve brought it back.
• Friday, December 8: This is a big night; I hope there’s nothing exciting going on outside of my house because I don’t plan on leaving. CBS’s animated holiday special tour de force: “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “Frosty the Snowman,” and “Frosty Returns.” It seems like a bit of overkill to put these all on one night, but I guess desperate times call for desperate measures, and it takes a lot of firepower to beat out Stossel AND “To Catch a Predator” in the ratings. “Rudolph” is the king of the holiday specials. Frosty says inane stuff like “You wouldn’t be sneezing if you weren’t cold!” and “Frosty Returns” features such mid-’90s stalwarts as John Goodman. ‘Nuff said.
• Saturday, December 9: “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” ABC, 8:00. If you don’t catch it on network TV, turn on TBS anytime between now and Christmas Eve. If “A Christmas Story” is on, you waited too long.
• Sunday, December 10: “It’s a Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie,” WBGN, 11 a.m. This was apparently made for NBC in 2002 and features cameos from Yoda and Triumph. I don’t remember if I watched it then, but it sounds decently funny, or at least campy. Apparently not a keeper, though, since in four years’ time it managed to slide from a prime time spot on NBC to a Sunday morning slot on that channel that’s, like, not really public access, but still shows “The Beverly Hillbillies” several times a night.
• Monday, December 11: “The Year Without a Santa Claus,” NBC, 9:00. Kudos to NBC for bringing this one back to network TV. Why the hell is it on at 9:00? Little kids go to bed at 9:00, guys. The Snowmiser isn’t THAT scary.
• Tuesday, December 12: “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” ABC, 8:00. Since TBS showing it daily for a month AND ABC showing it once in prime time wasn’t enough.

I’ve left off all the shows on cable because, hey, I don’t have cable. Also, as I may have noted above (below?), Garfield is notably absent from this year’s crop of specials. My righteous indignance knows no bounds with respect to this. Perhaps I will fire off an ugly email in the direction of Rob Owen.

Black Friday victory: I stopped at Eckerd to pick up a bottle of hair gel for my brother, and at the checkout, the cashier scratched off a lottery ticket-type thing for me that allowed me ten percent off my “entire purchase.” I thought I feigned delight, but I’m not sure I could muster up enough to be convincing, standing there with one product worth about four dollars in my hand. Should I have shrieked a bit, perhaps kissed her? Oh well.

The Post-Gazette listed all the upcoming TV holiday specials today; full analysis forthcoming, but I’ll give you this: no Garfield Christmas this year (that I saw), but NBC is running “Year Without a Santa Claus,” which seems to be coming back into vogue. Anything that brings the Heatmiser increased visibility is okay in my book.

There’s a certain sweet spot on my bed here at the parents’ that allows me to steal Wi-fi from someone out there — I can’t even begin to imagine what neighbor it is, and the fact that the only place I can snatch it it smack in the middle of my bed does not indicate any particular direction the signal might be coming from. Regardless, something to give thanks for.

Behold, if you will: “pro-life zingers” checks and address labels. I don’t know why they made the animation of the different designs alternate so quickly you can’t really read them. Except maybe that the exciting animation will distract you from realizing that this is an awful thing to be putting on your FREAKING PERSONAL CHECKS.

It’s the busy season here at work, what with all the people getting their loved ones library books for Christmas. Probably not as much writing from me, therefore.

As mentioned, I bought some books and records the other day — Rumours, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, and the 1812 Overture on vinyl, and Introducing Baudrillard,  a pop culture studies textbook the name of which escapes me right now, and a copy of The Waste Land. All for cheap, courtesy Half Price Books in the South Hills — the store where all the employees are required to be kind of loud and funny.

Also I went to my BFF from high school’s wedding this weekend, and read a lot of Virginia Woolf for class. And watched the Steelers finally win the second game in a row, if only barely. And it’s almost time for slobbin’ around the parents’ house over Thanksgiving.

No complaints.

Greetings, audience. I come to you this evening from the Eastern Suburbs, where I have already watched one hour-long documentary about the RFK assassination and done some reading for class. It’s sort of a lot like 1999 or something.

Speaking of which, tomorrow I attend the wedding of the young man whom I befriended in high school and beroommated freshman year of college. I just got a little sketched that I couldn’t remember if it was at 3:00 or 2:00, and the invitation is at my house in the city and I’m not there, but then I used the remarkable magic of archived Gmail chats to determine the true time. Thank heavens for Google.

It’s fairly clear at this point that I have nothing of merit to say right now, so I’m going to “let you go,” as people who are tired of talking to you on the phone say, and sometime later I’ll tell you about the books and records I bought today at Half Price Books. Try not to lose sleep over the suspense.

I’m curating the Solo Artist Showcase at Modernformations next month. Here are the specs, folks:

Thursday, December 14, 8pm, $3, 4919 Penn Ave

SAS presents music and poetry!

Music by: Julie Sokolow, King Egg, Michael Cosentino
Readings by: Kristofer Collins, Beth Steidle, Ed Steck, Andy Mulkerin

I may or may not be reading the dialogue from Mary Worth strips. We’ll just see about that.

Anyway, one good thing I’ve gotten my hands recently is the (American) debut album by Swedish lady Frida Hyvönen, Until Death Comes.

So, sure, it fits in a way into my known preference for cute-via-poignant piano pop a la Ben Folds and Elton John. She also has a gorgeous voice that’ve reminiscent of, say Carole King or Carly Simon. Not every song on the album is an absolute winner, but the winners are winners by a landslide victory.

The lyrics can be trite (there’s a song called “NY” — who writes odes to New York City in 2006? I guess people from Sweden), but in other places they’re biting and beautiful (”Once I was a serene teenaged child/ Once I felt your cock against my thigh/ You said you were a poet/ Man, your poetry wasn’t obvious to me when you said I had the stuff that drove you wild/ But the feeling of power was intoxicating magic“).

“Come Another Night” mimics the Spector wall of sound; other songs hit a vibe that’s merely playful (see “The Modern:” “See, I had made him pregnant/ Our child will be the word/ The new word for the modern/ The second word for love”). None of it is simplistic, though — every song has enough going on to sustain a serious fascination after several listens. Sometimes it’s a haunting bass chord, other times a lonely piece of verse that reminds us the singer, even with her occasional whimsical silliness, is indeed from Scandinavia.

While “Until Death Comes” does have its weak spots, the good notes are good enough to make it an essential, I think, even for people like me who don’t really listen to anything post-1980 anymore. The recording, the arrangement, and the content make the album fit in with anything made in, say, 1971, without making it sound (in most cases anyway) like a retro-chic indie outfit trying to invoke the past. A good album with several great songs, and an artist with a bright future, to be sure. She’s in the U.S. right now but of course isn’t stopping here. Maybe next time, after she releases the near-perfect album that I bet is coming.

Check out the sample media on her website.