(from “Haunter,” by Sam Alden, 2013)
Tea With Chris: Actually About Turkey
Tea With Chris is a roundup of recommended links, posted every Thursday. Here are a few of our favourite things from the Internet this week.
Chris: I have no idea what this is a photo of, but I like looking at it.
Carl: First & foremost let me direct your attention to the doctors who are trying to fix what the Canadian government is doing to refugee claimants on health care. Day of action on Monday.
A perfect model of a making-of-the-music article by Matthew Lindsay on the Quietus: The road to Madonna’s first album.
Lately I’ve been thinking about how Turkey and Iran resemble Toronto or the U.S. in terms of the geography of worldview and its effect on political formations. Case in point, Kansas.
And then, actually about Turkey.
Can your job be done by a hologram?
Do you agree with Russell Smith that voluntary self-revelation means that you have forfeited all other need for privacy? I say no. If you don’t want the government(s) to read your email, browser history, etc, here are some options.
Filed under carl wilson, chris randle, linkblogging, margaux williamson
Carl’s Tuesday Musics: Nina Simone, “Feelings”
by Carl Wilson
After a superb show by Joshua Abrams’ Natural Information Society last night, preceded by a fantastic time-traversing folk-song one-man-machine performance by Martin Arnold, someone in conversation mentioned this Nina Simone performance at the 1976 Montreux Jazz Festival of the Morris Albert song that was at that point a completely ubiquitous, world-shrouding hit. The original ironic punk cover version? Perhaps, but so much more. Over the course of playing it, Simone attacks the song satirically and aggressively, tries to get the audience to sing along, and yet also turns schmaltz to bouillabaisse. There’s nothing like it.
Filed under music, Tuesday Musics
Little Boxes #144: Dark Threatening Perfection
(from The Incal, script by Alejandro Jodorowsky and art by Moebius)
Filed under chris randle, comics
Tea With Chris: Highest Ghost Rate Per Capita
Tea With Chris is a roundup of recommended links, posted every Thursday. Here are a few of our favourite things from the Internet this week.
Chris: This interview with the big-on-Tumblr cartoonist Simon Hanselmann is, um, wow. For once the word “revelatory” seems not only justified but understated. From his very first answer: “I turned 31 last December, four days before Christmas. I spent it in a hot tub, drinking champagne, gazing out across the ocean. I was born in Tasmania. Tasmania is a small island/sovereign state at the bottom of Australia. It is densely haunted by convicts’ ghosts — highest rate of ghosts per square kilometer in the world. I was born in Launceston, the second largest population center in Tasmania. A real shit hole. Highest crime rate per capita in Australia. I detest it.”
Carl: Fresh from kicking the ass of the Venice Biennale, Toronto’s leading clit-rawk ensemble Vag Halen is profiled alongside a host of other “all-female tribute bands” in the Guardian. (Though they missed Toronto’s other exemplar, Sheezer.) Light on analysis but perhaps the analysis is obvious enough? Vanessa Dunn expands in The Globe and Mail: “As soon as you step on stage, you’re a feminist.”
Somebody please buy the novelization rights to this: Man Builds Secret Apartment in Mall, Gets Away with It for Four Years. It could be written by Sam Lipsyte, in one mode, or Lydia Davis, in another.
This is an extraordinary story about landays, Afghanistan’s Pashtun folk poetry form, and how women are creating them in undercover protest against their own repression, whether by men in their own culture or by the American invaders. “Making love to an old man/ is like fucking a shriveled cornstalk blackened by mold.” “O darling, you’re American in my eyes./ You are guilty; I apologize.”
LRB blog has been running some good first-person reports from Turkey.
And in a more end-of-week mood: All of us with physiques kinda like Patton Oswalt wish we could be edited to dance as well as he does here in this video for his favourite Coup song, The Magic Clap.
Filed under carl wilson, chris randle, linkblogging, margaux williamson
Carl’s Tuesday Musics: Carly Simon, “Why” (Paradise Garage Remix)
by Carl Wilson
Back story: This recent piece on The National (which marked my debut as the new Slate music critic) sparked some conversation with friends about the liberating feeling of saying “yes, I suppose it’s good, but I have no use for it.” Which then led to the flipside sentiment: “Yes, I suppose it’s shitty, but I DON’T CARE I LOVE IT.” One conversationalist in tones of great shame brought up Carly Simon (who?). When I hear Carly Simon, I can think only of “You’re So Vain” (great!), “Anticipation” (meh) and “Nobody Does It Better” (horrifying crap), so I asked for further evidence to bring to trial. Someone immediately brought up this Chic-era Nile Rodgers (he’s on the new Daft Punk album, guys) production. Then I found the Paradise Garage remix by disco deity Larry Levan, and … if for no other reason, Carly Simon, we think you can stay.
Filed under carl wilson, music, Tuesday Musics
Little Boxes #143: Fogged Blocks
(from “Lost in the Andes!” by Carl Barks, 1949)
Filed under chris randle, comics
