Monthly Archives: June 2010
Title Track
by Carl Wilson
An email group that I’m on – let’s call it the Nerd Mafia – got into exchanging favourite song titles this week. Continue reading
Filed under carl wilson, music, other
Robin Hood (2010) – directed by Ridley Scott, starring Russell Crowe
by Margaux Williamson
(My friend Lauren Bride invited me to the movies. She suggested “Robin Hood” or “Babies.” We decided on “Robin Hood” because it was summertime. At the theatre, when I saw Russell Crowe’s head on the poster, I was a little disappointed. He always plays the mightiest of virtuous white men, sort of like Doris Day but not as funny and more prone to unwanted and overly serious advice giving. I might have picked “Babies” had I known. How could such a can’t-play-anything-but-a-virtuous-man play Robin Hood? I also somehow made the mistake of picturing the time period being 1990s, and the stage, Hollywood – the time of Kevin Costner and well-laundered cloaks. So I was a little startled when the movie opened in the deep past. I think probably no one else was startled. Throughout the movie, Lauren and I whispered jokes to each other. When we walked home, we didn’t mention the movie. We talked about other things.)
[...] Continue reading
Filed under margaux williamson, movies
Tea With Chris: An Altruistic Army
“Tea With Chris” is a roundup of recommended links, posted every Friday. Here are our favourite things from the internet this week: Carl: Tracy Wright in Me and You and Everyone We Know: This appearance in Miranda July’s movie by … Continue reading
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Filed under carl wilson, chris randle, margaux williamson, other
Friday Pictures – Shaan Syed and Luc Tuymans
photo from Will Munro’s Memorial/ Celebration
photo by Shaan Syed (2010)
Luc Tuymans, Turtle, (2007)
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Filed under Friday Pictures, margaux williamson, other, visual art
All the Critics Love U in Nippon
So I wrote a cycle of haikus about Prince. They are dedicated to Tipper Gore, without malice. She fucked me, my sis I’m pretty sure she meant to See, I was budding He and I could share You used to … Continue reading
Filed under chris randle, music
The Elephant in the Living Room (2010) – by Michael Webber, starring Terry Brumfield and Tim Harrison
by Margaux Williamson
(The closest cinema to where I’m staying in San Francisco is called Roxie Theater. Roxie Theater was playing a movie I hadn’t heard of: “The Elephant in the Living Room.” I looked around but it seemed like all the other nearby cinemas were playing movies for kids. I thought: maybe June is when kids watch movies. So I went around the corner and bought a ticket. It was being presented by the United Film Festival as part of their “Animal Rights” program. The director of the festival and the director of “The Elephant in the Living Room” sat down in the narrow line of blue seats with the audience when the movie began.)
The narrative of “The Elephant in the Living Room” is sort of: “There is a lion in my backyard – and it is getting bigger!” [...] Continue reading
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Filed under margaux williamson, movies
Working in Close-Up: Fiery Furnaces, Patti Smith, Will Munro, Tracy Wright
by Carl Wilson
When I first saw Eleanor Friedberger of the Fiery Furnaces perform, I was (like many others) reminded of Patti Smith. But it’s in the angle of E.F.’s nose and the insolence of her mouth and the willfully untended hair, not in her voice really. E.F. has a well-bred, kids’-TV-meets-cabaret approach to singing a story, like a book on tape, her consonants so crisp it’s like they’re sweating little beads of tart apple juice. It’s more as if Edith Nesbit fronted a rock band, or Edith Wharton. Still, Smith and the Fiery Furnaces both build word-drunk narratives over a musical scaffold from the heavier end of classic rock (though in Smith’s heyday those classics were new); and they both depend on partnerships between a woman who sings and a guy who plays guitar. Smith’s most famous collaborator is Lenny Kaye, though there have been others. Eleanor Friedberger’s foil is Matthew Friedberger, her brother. Continue reading
Filed under carl wilson, music, other
Little Boxes #1
(from Melvin Monster #1, by John Stanley, 1965) Continue reading
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Filed under chris randle, comics
