DISQUS

These are the same people that have built the Creation Museum in Ky, which I visited last year. It is an amazing place, as much for the people who visit as the exhibits. I was behind two middle aged women who were fascinated to find out that since weeds were a product of man's fall, Satan was responsible for the fact that they had so much yard work.
This stuff has a lot of traction because of the way it's being presented and Ken Hamm, from AIG, is really very good at it.

Fairy Tales: A Six Word Novelization:

All things must pass. Let's play.

I first got into the Drive By Truckers by way of Mil Blogger The Apppalachian. I haven't gone too deeply into the back catalogue, but "Gravity's Gone" from A Blessing and A Curse is one of my favorite songs from the last couple years:
"So I'll meet you at the bottom if there really is one,
They always told me 'When you hit it, you'll know',
But I've been falling so long it's like gravity's gone and I'm just floating."

That's three-dimensional lyric writing by my book.
I'll have to give the new one a listen.

J.-
I've only heard it on the Firesign Theater Album, Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers, hence my use of it in reply to this post. Mr. Tirebiter says it to Mrs. Tirebiter after he's spent the morning exfoliating their Victory Garden, if memory serves me.
-OOC

All I have to say about this is:
O Puberty, where is thy sting.

Well done, Greg. I just liked the way they sound.

(PS. The word "units" in your Japanese point gave me a creepy 80's A&R Man vibe.)

Cohen's a guy I don't get. Maybe it's because I was forced to review his god-awful book, Book of Mercy as an undergraduate. He's never showed me a new idea, made me feel something in a novel way or just entertained me in an old-fashioned way, except for one song: Dance Me To The End of Love. That one alone would get him in the OOC Hall of Fame.

A lot of people seem to be critical of looking at things like music from a scientific angle, as though it will ruin the romance of the thing (a fundamentally religious reaction, in a way). I love the subject and find the more I know, the deeper and more fantastic the mystery. Looks like a worthwhile read. Thanks for letting us know about it.

I didn't mean to give the idea that interpretation of abstract art is without value, just that attempts at objective judgment doesn't interest me. I am absolutely enriched by the interpretations of (certain) others and it sometimes helps me triangulate my experience. It's a perspective thing.
The Duchamp paraphrase comes from an album of interviews and readings called "The Creative Act" on the Sub-Rosa label. I downloaded it off emusic and recommend it, if you like that kind of thing.

I guess I'll have to see this movie since the subject is one I find fascinating,.
"Abstract art essentially becomes decorative, its meanings left up to the subjective appraisal of the viewer"--I tend towards this opinion. Authorship, context and meaning are extremely relative concepts to me. I don't mean that it(some human creation) doesn't exist because I think about it, but it's importance is my own construct.
A couple of other points:
F for Fake, Welles picture about Clifford Irving and Elmyr d'Hory is a great examination of money and art, authorship and reality.
Your 'aura' quote from Benjamin reminds me of an interview I heard with Duchamp in which he asserts that no art should outlive it's creator, in fact, that it is 'dead' within a decade or two of it's creation.
Also, to kind of echo your Eliot point,I was upset to find that Hart Crane, one of my favorites, lifted wholesale from a tubercular young poet, Samuel Greenburg, in his poem, "Emblems of Conduct". What upset me is that Crane made no acknowledgement of his line-lifting, not that he mashed-up the original. Greenberg's work is a mess, while "Emblems" is a fine poem.

I DVR'd The Deal and made the mistake of attempting to watch the beginning when I should have been headed to bed. I watched the whole damn thing, which is amazing as I was so tired and it is so damned low-key, as you suggest. I found that it helped that I knew absolutely nothing about English internal politics, which kept me curious. I don't know how I would have taken it if I knew the story well. It is a good way to get a character sketch of the two leaders; I kind of felt like I had read a really good article when it was over. I found Gordon Brown appealing but towards the end the actors seemed to drift into caricature. A nice movie for a political buff to watch on a grey Sunday afternoon.

Tom, I must confess to not having read The Naked and the Dead, although I have a lovely hardbound copy on my shelf. Also, I wonder if it's coincidence that Capote and Mailer were such celebrities and produced two fantastic (by my reckoning) docu-novels.
As for being "that kind of man", I think you can, and, in fact, it may be easier. Talent is not even necessary anymore.

I agree absolutely with your take on Executioner's Song, which had a tremendous impact on me as a young man. I read In Cold Blood about the same time and those two books really helped shape my attitude on art and reality. The triangulation of collective reality, the artist's selection of reality and the reader's perception fictionalized my reality and realized my imagination at an impressionable age. I'm not saying that's necessarily a good thing, but as a relativist, it is the only thing.
Mailer visited my college and I was able to see him in a relatively informal setting. I remember nothing of what was said, but I remember his physical presence: a solid round man, stuffed uncomfortably into a flannel shirt and corduroys and really shabby sneakers. Maybe it's telling that his physicality is all I remember.

Oh and I kind of liked Deer Park...go figure...

Ten-four, Eleanor.

By the way, my teenage kids were truly disturbed when they watched the Exorcist for the first time with me this Halloween.

How about this one about getting cheated buying a slice of pizza: "If the pizza was a pie chart for what people would do if the found a million dollars then I got the 'donate it to charity' slice. Excuse me, I would like to exchange this for the 'keep it'."

One of my all-time favorites-practically an OOC icon: "I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later."

I was in college when I saw Interiors with a local Philly crowd. The members of the crowd intensified the comedy with their shouts of "Don't open that door", "Don't blow in that woman's mouth" and "Step into the frame, bitch. Who the hell's talking". Comedy truly is tragedy plus the right audience.
Of course, I still I prefer his earlier, more serious movies.

One of the best midnight movies from my youth, as much as I can remember. The apex of Sting's career. Great album for the songs, especially '5:15' and 'Cut My Hair'. Not a big fan of 'rock opera', concept albums, or the book of any traditional opera either for that matter. Still if I had to take a 'rock opera' into space with me, I could do a lot worse (Preservation Act 1, anyone?).



Q: Are you a mod or a rocker?
A: I'm a mocker.

--Not from the picture of the same name.

Does anyone remember Sasha Baron Cohen on the Daily Show recounting his Ali G interview with Lipton? After the filming, Lipton showed him topless pictures of an oriental woman, who turned out to be his wife. Old habits die hard.

Funny you should bring it up but I just caught a few minutes of The Green Berets on TV a few days ago. The scene was a press briefing and the propaganda was thick. I put it on my cue to pick-up at the library because a lot of the pro-war arguments and the disdain for the skeptical reporter were similar to what we hear nowadays.
As for DePalma, I don't get the attraction and I don't watch his movies. He knows movie history and seems doomed to repeat it. Carlito's Way is the only one I've seen and still remember liking.

TW-
Kobo Abe, Raymond Chandler, Aldous Huxley, John O'Hara, John Dos Passos, Nelson Algren, Humphrey Cobb (Paths of Glory is the only book he wrote and it is great), JG Ballard to name a few off the top of my head.

I'm going to chime in here about Moby Dick, which is one of my all time favorites, which I find odd because I tend to like short books and stripped down sentences. The best thing, for me, about the book is the long section of whale quotes at the beginning, which is reads kind of like proto-Google search results and sets the theme of obsession (and some may argue monotony).
I have a lovely mint condition exact reprint of the original edition of On The Road. It is in mint condition because I have started it several times, but never found interesting enough to continue.
Burroughs is the only Beat era guy I like and I like him a lot. Some of that probably has to do with his reading voice. Once I heard him read his stuff, I couldn't read it without hearing him.
Finally, I was almost physically repelled by Delillo's Underworld and, while I liked Richard Power's Gain a good deal, I spit out The Echo Maker like sour wine. Usually, though, surprise comes for me when I really like something, not the other way round.

And apparently, Dan's White Whale is a certain Frenchman. To paraphrase Jan Brady, "Marcel, Marcel, Marcel..."

Viscount...I don't believe Lynch sabotaged Twin Peaks. I've read that he feels the switch from Thursdays to Saturdays and the fact that they were forced to reveal Laura Palmer's killer by the network killed the show. He says he hated leaving the world of Twin Peaks, hence the feature he made, Fire Walk With Me.

Dan, you may be right by too much freedom (just like having too much money to make a picture can ruin it). What's going on here is an unrestrained move to personal vision. Lynch is an absolute believer in the director as auteur. There's no question it's self-indulgent and I don't think he would reject that characterization. He thinks the path to the universal is through the self. He's running with it.

You're right about the cinematographic beauty of his previous work, but I like the lo-res, too (of course, I use 110 film for my photography). It's an odd change for him, though, because one of the things he complained about in working with TV was the low and varied quality. The fact that every viewer's tv would have different brightness, tint and contrast really bothered him.

I've been doing a lot of reading about Lynch, a couple of interview books and his slim little volume, "Catching the Big Fish" and I bought the DVD as soon it came out. Lynch is guided by the belief in a 'unified field' where all things are connected--it's part of the TM philosophy to which he is fully committed. Bunnies and street people, gypsies and actors, it's all a manifestation of the unified field. That's what leads to something like Inland Empire. He's satisfied with the connections he makes between the elements of the picture and believes that the thing works because it has an internal structure in which he is confident. Exasperatingly formless, certainly, and I would never try to win anyone over to this movie. Having said that, I enjoyed Inland Empire. I watched it without struggling to interpret, just as I would listen to music. There's a do-it yourself-kit aspect to his work that Lynch acknowledges unapologetically. It's kind of what he's shooting at.
estiv: "he’s one of those artists who never seems to step back, look at what he’s created..." He just is not interested in pleasing the audience when he's making something. He's pretty self absorbed and goes with his gut. Sounds like the President...maybe George Bush would have been my favorite director--Ed Wood, John Ford and David Lynch rolled up in one...or maybe I've just lost my marbles, too...

Ian Curtis is my Jim Morrison...
Don't forget Brian Jones, and Joe Strummer, either.