Today's listening

Lou Reed: Berlin

Spoon: Telephono/Soft Effects

Magazine: Real Life

David Bowie: "Heroes"

Some good news

Friday morning I finally took my GRE. Long story short, I kicked ass. 680 verbal, 780 quantitative. The analytical writing section isn't graded at the time of the exam; I have to wait two or three weeks for the results. I think I did pretty well on the first essay, but I nailed the second one. Without revealing too much about the contents of the exam, I'll just say that I've taken classes that pertained directly to the subject matter of the essay, which gave me a great deal of confidence.

I checked my e-mail when I got home and I was notified that I had been selected to serve on a search committee for a vacant job in the ASU libraries. I've been eager for an opportunity like this, not just because it's the kind of experience that will help me get a supervisory position in the future, but also because I want to participate in the hiring process.

Strangely, the news I am most excited about is the joint Costco membership that Michael and I bought. If you are unfamiliar with Costco, it's a lot like Sam's Club, except Costco won't use the money you spend there to eradicate tolerance and clone Hitler. I've already shopped there three times in the last week. I purchased season seven of Buffy the Vampire Slayer for $17, a 300GB external hard drive for $140 and two pairs of lounging pants for $8 each, along with about $90 in grocieries. Considering that I bought about three weeks of food, it's a fantastic deal. The fridge is bursting at the seams and I am eating raisins by the handful. I'm not really into shopping per se, but I find myself daydreaming about shopping there nonetheless.

That's all for now. I will post more soon about applying to grad school.

paleunderweight podcast 30, part 2

Now available.

1. Yo La Tengo: "I Feel Like Going Home"
2. Clogs: "Voisins"
3. Tom Waits: "First Kiss"
4. Man Man: "Banana Ghost"
5. Peter Bjorn and John: "Paris 2004"
6. Sally Shapiro: "Anorak Christmas"
7. Ellen Allien & Apparat: "Rotary"
8. Girl Talk: "Too Deep"
9. Thom Yorke: "Harrowdown Hill"
10. Final Fantasy: "This Lamb Sells Condos"
11. Bonnie "Prince" Billy: "Wai"
12. The Handsome Family: "Famous Blue Raincoat"
13. The Decemberists: "Shankhill Butchers"
14. Sunset Rubdown: "Us Ones in Between"
15. The Blow: "Pardon Me"
16. Arctic Monkeys: "From the Ritz to the Rubble"
17. The Hold Steady: "Arms and Hearts"

paleunderweight podcast 30, part 1

Now available.

1. The Pipettes: "Judy"
2. The Dresden Dolls: "First Orgasm"
3. Junior Boys: "FM"
4. Beirut: "The Bunker"
5. Datarock: "Nightflight to Uranus"
6. Cat Power: "Willie"
7. Richard Butler: "California"
8. Destroyer: "Watercolours Into the Ocean"
9. My Robot Friend: "Dead"
10. Camera Obscura: "Country Mile"
11. Joanna Newsom: "Sawdust & Diamonds"
12. Akron/Family: "One Spring Morning"
13. Jesu: "Star"
14. Belle & Sebastian: "White Collar Boy"
15. Neko Case: "Margaret vs. Pauline"

What's new with me

I have decided, with some reluctance, to discontinue my Recommendations 2006 project. I just have too many things on my plate right now and have to focus on preparing for my GRE and on my classes this semester. I have removed the links on the right side, but all existing recommendations will stay. The podcast will return this Saturday. It will be in two parts and consist of tracks from thirty or so of my favorite albums of 2006, but it will not be a countdown. After that, I will post a new podcast every week or two. I will not post daily lists of what I've been listening to, but I will cull the tracks from the albums I've listened to during the week.

I have dropped one of my classes because the bookstore screwed up on the books repeatedly. I decided that the difficulty I was having getting the right editions was more than it was worth to me. I'm still taking the two music classes and enjoying them quite a bit.

I will pay for my GRE on 1/31 or as soon as my tax refund is deposited into my checking account, whichever comes first. I plan to take the exam on 2/1 or as soon as possible thereafter. I am not killing myself trying to prepare; I've decided that I will review every few days, take the test and accept the results. I always do really well on standardized tests and taking one practice test after another wasn't helping my scores anyway.

My most exciting news is that I am losing weight steadily and more quickly than I had anticipated. I haven't had access to a decent scale until recently, so I can't be sure the total amount lost. Michael lent me his electronic scale last Sunday and I have lost eight pounds since. I am now 216 lbs. with a BMI of 28.5, which means I am no longer medically obese. I am still 27 lbs. overwieght, but I might be within a "healthy" weight range within a month if I continue what I am doing. Realistically, I know that my rate of weight loss will probably level off soon and continue at a slower rate, but I am still hoping for the best.

That's all for now. More later.

Coachella

Couldn't you just plotz?! Seriously, I would love to go to this one. As soon as I get my tax refund, I'm going to look into transportation and hotel costs.

Has anything more wonderful ever happened in the history of humankind?

Pitchfork is reporting that Björk's new album is due in late Spring.

A new Björk album is a wonderful thing indeed, but more wonderful than, say, George Eads showing up at your door unexpectedly with a pizza and a massage table? More wonderful than a giant pie filled with smaller pies? More wonderful than warm underwear right out of the dryer?

Yes, a Björk album can be more wonderful than all those things combined, but only if said album includes at least one duet with Antony Hegarty. Luckily for the entire human race, it will have two.

Now, if only George Eads would show up at my door while I'm listening to the new Björk album...

My recommendations 2006:Rather Ripped by Sonic Youth

Sonic Youth: Rather Ripped
Geffen 6/13/2006

I often wonder how Sonic Youth has managed to rebound from a seemingly terminal mid-90s lull to release three of their best records in quick succession. I think that, having perfected their distinct sound, they have postponed further innovation until they have fully explored the space they've created. On Rather Ripped, they wrestle tried-and-true archetypes from the last fifty years of pop into submission and refract them through their own cracked prism. Their characters retell ancient stories on squalid, dystopian stages. The stamina of Sonic Youth's career is largely due to solid musicianship and a knack for literary themes.

My recommendations 2006:Disco Romance by Sally Shapiro

Sally Shapiro: Disco Romance
Diskokaine 12/1/2006

Numerous reviews of Disco Romance have labeled the work of Sally Shapiro and her producer, Johan Agebjörn, as italo disco. Truthfully, I don't know enough about the various genres of dance music to evaluate this claim, but I am skeptical. I don't think that electronic music is ever that cut-and-dry, such that one can categorize it based on objective and indisputable criteria. It more vividly reminds me of the music that was being played at my favorite clubs in the early 90s than anything by Girogio Moroder. I was sixteen years old, had just come out and was full of hope and fear. I remember the music as jubilant, romantic and anthemic, just like Disco Romance. I can't be sure whether my memories are evoked by genuine stylistic similarities, or if my emotional reponse to the record just reminds me of what I was feeling during that period of my life. Either way, Disco Romance's emotional content adds charm to an already superb record.

My recommendations 2006:28 After by Black Devil Disco Club

Black Devil Disco Club: 28 After
Lo Recordings 11/21/2006

Available at Emusic

If 2006 has taught us anything, it's that an artist's long hiatus isn't necessarily an obstacle to excellence. Case in point, the French duo Black Devil Disco Club, whose 1978 debut, upon its reissue in 2004, was met with skepticism regarding whether it was an authentically vintage release. It simply sounded too advanced to be the product of analog machines. 28 Later is, as one might guess, Black Devil Disco Club's first release in nearly thirty years and is just far enough removed from anything else today that it's equally difficult to believe that it was made in 2006. Unlike virtually all dance music created today, 28 Later's percussion is pushed into the background, allowing soft plastic bits of treble to twitch and squirm unimpeded. At moments, it sounds like two different DJs spinning in adjacent rooms. When 28 Later is reissued in 2034, it is likely to be met with the same disbelief as its predecessor.

Resolutions

No, I haven't fallen off the edge of the Earth. I've just been in that perfect intermediate state between busy and lazy, such that I haven't mustered the time or energy to blog.

My GRE plans are still on track, thanks in large part to a good friend that repaid me a significant chunk of money that I had lent her a couple years ago. Consequently, I was able to pay a couple of bills early and create room in my budget to pay the $130 for the exam fee out of my next check.

Classes start again on Tuesday. I was able to acquire all but one book. The campus bookstore never had it sent from the East campus, despite the request I made over a month ago. So now I have to contact the East campus bookstore myself and I expect it will take about a week to get it. In the meantime, I have found that the previous edition is available electronically and at very low cost from a vendor endorsed by the university. I hope this will suffice until I can get the correct edition.

Supervisory Academy has been postponed indefinitely while the course is revamped. I have been assured that there will be a Spring session but it has not been scheduled yet. I hope so, as any significant delay will hurt my chances of getting hired for a supervisory position.

Michael completed the Walt Disney World Marathon last week. Needless to say, I am extremely proud of him. I know that it took a tremendous amount of resolve to train for and complete this marathon. I find his determination to accomplish his goals incredibly attractive.

I am finished selecting the remaining albums of 2006 that I will recommend. I am going to try to finish the recommendations in the next few days and record the next podcast next week.

Though I'm not usually the kind of person that makes New Year's resolutions, I have been trying, with great success, to make some changes in my life in the interest of improving my health. This is largely the result of having calculated, much to my terror, my BMI. For the first time in my life, I am borderline obese. Among the changes are much more water, much less caffeine, no red meat, fresh fruit every day, breakfast daily and drastically reduced sweets. For the last two weeks, my typical day generally includes about three or four liters of water, a bowl of cereal with skim milk and blueberries, a turkey or tuna sandwich, sushi (non-authentic), an apple or two and two or three cups of fat-free yoghurt. When I get home from work, I am usually not hungry enough to eat a full dinner but I snack on fresh fruit throughout the afternoon and evening. My fridge is stocked with apples, oranges, clementines, apricots, peaches, cherries and whatever else I'm in the mood for.

This has led me to the hypothesis that I may be lactose intolerant. I always thought I had digestive discomfort because my diet was terrible. It turns out that I am still experiencing discomfort but only after having cheese or milk, as far as I can tell. This week I am switching from skim to soy milk and refraining from cheese. Yoghurt, I think, is still okay because of the acidophilus. If I start feeling better, I will likely make it a permanent change.

Last week I read an article about the strategies used by those who have successfully lost a significant amount of weight and kept it off. It appears that my plans already include most of these strategies, which gives me hope for success. The last part of the equation, of course, is exercise. Historically, I have not been very good at sticking to exercise. However, a coworker directed my attention to a website that has an easy plan for beginners. It starts out with walking and builds up to running. I hope to start it soon. I know I can handle the walking; I already walk almost everywhere as it is, and quickly, too. Hopefully, I won't have too hard of a time transitioning to running.

That's all I can think of for now. I will start posting a lot more, I promise. Keep an eye out for more recommendations over the next few days.

Personal update

A lot has happened in the last couple of weeks.

Christmas was very nice. Michael and I spent the weekend with our friends in Tucson again. He got me the Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man DVD (in exchange for which I agreed never to make him watch it) and a book collecting all of the artwork from the complete output of Factory Records, i.e., albums, singles, promotional materials, etc. I gave him a DVD player (to replace the one that died a few months ago) and two seasons of Will & Grace. I also bought a copy of Vellum for a friend and one for myself, finally. I kept getting it through interlibrary loan and running out of time before I had finished reading it.

I have registered for three online classes, two about music and one on reflective writing, for the Spring semester. The latter will count toward the Journalism/Mass Communication degree and the first two are for my personal fulfillment. I plan to pay my tuition tonight - a whopping sum of $68. Needless to say, I love my employee tuition waiver.

Additionally, I am taking a class called Supervisory Academy for work. This will count as a full year of supervisory experience when I apply for the Library Supervisor position that will open up after my boss finishes her M.A. and departs for greener pastures.

I'm also planning to take my GRE (finally) before February 1st. I keep procrastinating and missing deadlines. The absolutely final day I can apply for U of A's MLS program for the summer is April 1st. This will give me time to receive my GRE results, write my C.V. and letter of intention and gather up two letters of recommendation. I think four months to prepare my application is a realistic goal.

I am way behind on my end-of-the-year project, so it's unlikely that I will get caught up by Monday. However, I am going to see it through until the bitter end, hopefully sometime in January. The podcast will reappear shortly thereafter.

Finally, here is a photo of the first two grilled cheese sandwiches I ever made, strangely enough. I took the photo in the midst of eating them. I didn't burn down the kitchen, to my roommate's relief, though he did derive some amusement from my clumsy efforts. They did taste good, though.

My recommendations 2006:Palo Santo by Shearwater

Shearwater: Palo Santo
Misra 5/9/2006

Available at Emusic

Shearwater is Okkervil River's quieter, more introspective alter ego, with Jonathan Meiburg taking the frontman's reins from Will Sheff. As is often the case with those that suppress anger, Shearwater is slow to come to a boil but lashes out forcefully, often with a sincere expression of disappointment, rather the disgust displayed on Okkervil River's Black Sheep Boy (a superb album in itself). Palo Santo represents an alternate perspective, another way of reacting to the same affronts. Shearwater illuminate a darker, perhaps more slippery path to catharsis, every bit as tranformative as the one traveled on Black Sheep Boy.

My recommendations 2006:Serena-Maneesh by Serena-Maneesh

Serena-Maneesh: Serena-Maneesh
Playlouderecordings 5/9/2006

Available at Emusic

A lot of people are needlessly hung up on the supposed virtues of originality, many to the point of giving glowing reviews to unlistenable albums that happen to be weird and giving bad reviews to gorgeous ones that tread familiar territory. On occasion, an album like Serena-Maneesh comes along that does little more than rehash a done-to-death genre, i.e., shoegaze, but does it so well that critics are tripping over themselves trying to explain why they love it, all the while making excuses for its familiarity. Frankly, all I care about is whether it's enjoyable - and in this regard, Serena-Maneesh is a superb album. After all, shoegaze is really hard to fuck up - one part reverb, one part feedback, two parts soft male/female vocals buried in the mix - and in competent hands, it can still be stunning. Despite a few rough edges, Serena-Maneesh have shown that they are at worst great imitators, and at best potential innovators.

My recommendations 2006:Pieces of the People We Love by The Rapture

The Rapture: Pieces of the People We Love
Universal 9/12/2006

Most assume that The Rapture make dance music with rock instrumentation. I disagree. I think they make rock music that's danceable. When I listen to Pieces of the People We Love, I hear similarities to The Sisters of Mercy, Joy Division, Gene Loves Jezebel and The Cult, reimagined through the lens of Peter Brown's "Do You Wanna Get Funky With Me?" and Giorgio Moroder. It seems that The Rapture's mission, as their name would suggest, is to subvert gloomy and cerebral musical paradigms into something joyful and visceral. Though The Rapture lament that nobody's dancing, they manage to get even the most cynical feet moving.

My recommendations 2006:We Are the Pipettes by The Pipettes

The Pipettes: We Are the Pipettes
Memphis Industries 8/29/2006

Available at Emusic

This could have been terrible, and conventional logic dictates that it should have. After all, when is the last time a female pop vocal group did anything interesting? The Supremes, ca. 1967? While The Pipettes are every bit as manufactured as The Spice Girls, the former's aim is to elevate public tastes to their own threshold, instead of pandering to existing standards. Rather than blindly (blandly) resurrect a long-dead genre wholesale, or even inflecting modern indie pop with Phil Spector-esque production, The Pipettes inhabit the overlapping portion of the Venn diagram of both. Instead of presenting an artificial fusion, We Are the Pipettes is completely organic, as if from an alternative timeline in which the Shangri-Las segued directly into Iggy & The Stooges.

My recommendations 2006:Writer's Block by Peter Bjorn and John

Peter Bjorn and John: Writer's Block
Wichita 6/29/2006

2006 has been an excellent year for Swedish bands, intriguing uses of rhythm sections and songs with whistling. Peter Bjorn and John's Writer's Block is (so far) my favorite example in all three of these categories. While Writer's Block isn't this trio's first album, it might be considered a debut of sorts, as it represents a radical reorganization of the band. Peter Bjorn and John have abandoned the hierarchical order of a conventional band, in which one or two members control the creative direction. For their latest album, they have promoted all three members to principal singer and songwriter. This is manifest in the astonishing diversity of the songs. Despite the seemingly random directions they take, the songs still exhibit a consistency that proves that Peter Bjorn and John share similar creative visions and ambitions. Much like the cover suggests, their combined talents shown on Writer's Block completely dwarf most of their peers.

My recommendations 2006:Fundamental by Pet Shop Boys

Pet Shop Boys: Fundamental
Rhino 6/27/2006

When I am burned by a band I love, it's very difficult for me to trust them again. Take, for example, Pet Shop Boys. The release of Very coincided with my coming-out at the age of sixteen. I fell in love with that album and it came to represent that period of my life in my memory. I soon had all of their albums and EPs. Bilingual took some time, but I warmed up to all but one or two songs. Then they followed it up with the absolutely abysmal Nightlife, which contained about a dozen of their worst songs ever, one decent single and a perplexing duet with Kylie Minogue. Since then, I have largely ignored their output for fear of being subjected to something even worse. However, the past two years have been marked by a series of return-to-form albums by artists I had given up on years ago, so I felt intuitively that I should give Fundamental a chance. I'm glad I did. Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe have finally made maturity work for them, drawing upon the strengths of their first four albums and innovating musically as well. Almost every song ranks among their best early material, easily making Fundamental their best album since Very.

R.I.P., Peter Boyle

I just learned from CNN that Peter Boyle passed away due to heart problems last night at the age of 71. Most people will remember him from Everybody Loves Raymond, but my fondest memory of him will always be his role in Young Frankenstein. May he always be remembered for making us laugh for more than thirty years.

My recommendations 2006:Now You Are One of Us by The Paper Chase

The Paper Chase: Now You Are One of Us
Kill Rock Stars 6/6/2006

Available at Emusic

The Paper Chase is a deceptively benign name for a band that makes such creepy music. Paranoid and macabre, Now You Are One of Us could easily replace any of Goblin's scores for Dario Argento's giallo flicks. Man-eating houses and body-snatching aliens stalk the listener at every sonic turn, while the unnervingly familiar reanimated corpse of a Cat Stevens melody gorges itself on your temporal lobes. Now You Are One of Us is among the most twistedly imaginative albums of the year.