2013: Towards Los Angeles

 2013: Towards Los Angeles

   2013 started with me going to New York, post break up.  As 2013 went on, I moved through the break up and thought about what to do next.  I was doing fine in San Diego post-break up in terms of money and career, but socially speaking most of my friends were through my ex, who was a native.  My eyes immediately turned to Los Angeles and I even had my eventual new partner in mind, having met her at a wedding- of someone I met through this blog- while my ex and I were still together.  Specifically, the Ariel Pink show in June in Los Angeles was the first occasion to hang out, though it wasn't a date and we were part of a group.

   Also, 2013 was the last year of the "Dirty Beaches/Zoo Music" era- Alex's amazing double record, Drifters/Love is the Devil represented a high point with the record getting Best New Music on Pitchfork- during an era where that still meant something, mind you.  The record was a big financial success, though it quickly became clear that even with the benefit of the Best New Music designation, true financial success was several orders of magnitude away- but both Alex and the label were making money in this period- not life changing money but money.

Roentgens Desk

Published 1/16/13
Thank God Extravagant Inventions: The Princely Furniture of the Roentgens Exhibit Is Still At The Met

  Phew- I was worried that Extravagant Inventions: The Princely Furniture of the Roentgens Exhibit was going to close before I made to New York City- but- relief- I will be there while the exhibit is still open (closes January 27th, 2013.)  I don't think there's an exhibit about 19th century furniture I've been THIS excited about since I last visited the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam a decade ago.

  Unfortunately I won't be in town for the Exhibition Tour- A Conservator's Perspective on Extravagant Inventions: The Princely Furniture of the Roentgens Exhibit.  I can't believe they got Mecthild Baumeister to do a walk n talk.

  This exhibit promises to be THE definitive statement on the rise of the father/son funiture design and manufacture duo Abraham and David Roentgens from their begins in Germany in the mid 18th century to their closure in the early 19th century.

  People are like, "Why go to New York in January- sounds terrible." And I'm like, "BECAUSE I LIKE TO GO TO MUSEUMS."

  I promise a full review upon my return!

Rubin Museum Interior

Published 1/24/13
The Rubin Museum of Art (of the Himalayas)
New York City
150 17th st. New York, NY.

   I am a big, big fan of museums.  Everything about museums.  And although I would say New York City is only the third best city for Museum-going in the world (Paris, London)- New York City has still got an amazing number of museums.

  Staying in Greenwich Village I decided to choose my museum visits by proximity.   The Rubin Museum is located between NYU and Chelsea.  Housed in an ex Bloomingdale's ladies store, The Rubin Museum specializes in the art of the Himalayan region.  A more accurate description would probably be "Tibetan Art Etc." but I'll stick with their preferred nomenclature.

  Unbelievably the permanent collection was closed for my visit- the museum-goers equivalent to flying to NYC for a Broadway show and finding out that the understudy is playing the lead instead of the Hollywood star you came to see.  However, I'm just going to assume, based on the quality of what I did see that the permanent collection is amazing- because everything else was.

Collection of Nyingjei Lam (HAR 68323).

 I don't fancy myself an expert in the area of Tibetan art, but I've been to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco a good half dozen times and could do ten minutes of party material on the wonders of Tibetan art- namely tons of scary looking demons derived from the Tantric Buddhist tradition and elaborate, detailed wall paintings of Buddhist themes and personages.

  My visit to the Rubin Museum of Art expanded that thin familiarity with two excellent exhibits:  Casting The Divine- a collection of 104 miniature sculptures Nyingjei Lam Collection.  The sculptures were quite a revelation- demonstrating a level of sophistication and quality that equalled any comparable European work from the same time period.  The subject matter is repetitive- Buddha/High Level Monk/Wandering Holy Man- though there were some interesting subjects- like a real-life famous wandering Ascetic who was depicted with dense curly hair that reflected his south Indian upbringing.

  Certainly these exquisite sculptures were something I had never seen before and I was impressed.

  The other interesting exhibit was The Place of Provenance- about regional variation of Tibetan painting.  Again- the subject matter was repetitive- you can tell the difference in regions by the way they paint the clouds- but the workmanship was really high quality.

   And while the Rubin Museum didn't alert me to the existence of high level Tibetan Art Products, it did expand my knowledge of the kinds and varieties of artifacts and their high level of quality.  It's worth a stop if you are in the area- though fyi it costs ten bucks to get in.  The Permanent Collection re-opens the first week of February 2013.
  

The New Museum on the Lower East Side New York NY

Published 1/25/13
The New Museum
L.E.S. New York, New York

Viewed
Rosemarie Trockel: A Cosmos (closed)

Prime Age, photograph by Rosemarie Trockel

  I'm not sure there is much value in reviewing a now closed museum exhibit, but the same could be said for this entire blog so.  First thing about the New Museum: No permanent collection so it's a very WYSIWYG kind of scenario.  The exhibit on display while I was visiting was Rosemarie Trockel, a German Artist who is notable for her refusal to stay in a single media or discipline.  The exhibit contained everything from punk style Zines, to knitted "paintings", to sculptural assemblages with a sprinkling of non-Rosemarie Trockel outsider Art/non-art "pieces" selected by the Artist.

Rosemarie Trockel

  Trockel's refusal to "settle down" and pick a studio art discipline is a primary reason that her collected output deserves a career retrospective at an NYC museum.  It also places the question of "what is art?" into a sharp focus- both by the width and breadth of "things" that Trockel has transformed into art through her vision, but also by the "non-art" objects that Trockel selected to stand along aside her artwork.  One "non-art" object is an amazing botanical illustration made by a woman in the 17th century- the woman was long overlooked because it was thought that a woman "couldn't" make such an accurate drawing of a living thing.

Rosemarie Trockel portrait

  There was an unexpected overlap between the Trockel retrospective and recent conversations I've had about the business of music, where people have emphasized the transformative aspect of digital reproduction in freeing specific Artists from formerly difficult to cross artistic boundaries.  For example, a Musician publishes a book instead of a record.  Such cross-marketing has always been an integral part of the upper layer of the Art-Industrial Complex, but digital distribution extends this layer downward to the very floor.

  What's lacking in that realm is the existence of Artists who are sufficiently keen enough to grasp this new freedom AND make Art products that people want to buy/put in museums to look at.

Rosemarie Trockel: A Cosmos exhibition lay-out

  I'm sure that Trockel has had people asking her for her entire career, "But what kind of Artist are you?"  Are you a painter? A sculptor?" etc.   Young Artists would be smart to a take a cue from the diversity of Trockel's output- and imitate her- not the specific artworks obviously, but the practice.

Published 1/27/13

Extravagant Inventions: 

The Princely Furniture of the Roentgens (closed)

Metropolitan Museum of Art 

   Another review of a closed Museum Exhibit in New York City! You are Welcome, readers!

   This was interesting to me because you don't see a whole lot of high-end 18th century European furniture on this side of the Atlantic.  Sure, if you want to hit Paris or Amsterdam the Louvre and Rijksmuseum got suites filled with the stuff, but not so much the United States.  

   Roentgen was a father/son furniture workshop from Germany/Netherlands that sold to a bunch I like to call, "The crowned heads of Europe."  Basically, he would finacle a face-to-face meeting with various royalty and then pitch them on buying furniture which he has either already made or would make on demand.  We are talking, King of France, Catherine the Great of Russia Etc. 

  As one might have every reason to expect, the furniture is amazing because they just haven't made furniture that ornate and detailed since the 18th century- the 19th century kind of killed demand for ornate writing desk's among the Kings and Queens of Europe:  pesky social revolutions!

  But as I sit here today- that time period- the early Modern period where skilled craftsmen made material possessions for royalty using modern techniques of crafte and manufacture- they made some ill shit.   Whether it be jewelry or furniture- the work stands up.  Particularly the techniques used by craftsmen to manufacture articles like furniture and jewelry.  I won't say it's a lost part, but people don't appreciate it like they used to, and there certainly aren't a ton of Kings and Queens sitting around going, "BRING ME YOUR FINEST MARQUETRY."

  People still appreciate furniture, but the appreciation is more likely to take the form of appreciation for the sturdy workmanship of Colonial America or the sleek lines of Modernism.  America wasn't even independent when most of the pieces in Extravagant Inventions was manufactured.  Pretty incredible that these pieces still exist.

Thomas Jefferson

Published 2/10/13
Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power
by Jon Meacham
p. 2012
Random House


  Here is the funniest thing about Thomas Jefferson and his legacy.  Historians spent close to two centuries denying that Thomas Jefferson banged the enslaved half-sister of his wife and fathered a half dozen children by her.  "Oh no- that's impossible- it was his nephew....no, no no, he would NEVER EVER do such a thing."  Across the board- historians denied it coming up with dozens of excuses.  Then- in the 1990s they finally got some quality DNA tests done AND GUESS WHAT YEAH HE DID.    Jefferson not only fathered a half dozen children by Sally Hemings, he kept the children AS SLAVES.

  So now of course, historians are like, "Oh you have to judge him by the standards of his times."  Oh rly, historians?  Is that why y'all spent two centuries bending over backwards to deny the truth?  What a crock of shit.  There were plenty of founding fathers who didn't enslave their own children- like- oh, I don't know- all of them.

  Meacham, to his credit, I guess, acknowledges the factual truth of this relationship and tries to place it into the context of Jefferson's life and times but man- the more I think about it the more it grosses me out.  Which is not to say that Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power is a gross book- quite the opposite.  Meacham's one volume biography of Jefferson won the Pulitzer Prize last year.

  It clocks in at 500 pages with an additional 200 pages of footnotes.  It's pretty hard to write a one volume of Jefferson's live- and to do it you need to assume that the reader is already familiar with the historical events in the Revolutionary/Early Republic era.   With 43 chapters Meacham keeps the narrative moving along- 10 pages on this, 10 pages on that- the pace more resembles a well researched feature film then a scholarly biography.  Perhaps for that reason Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power seems destined to maintain a position as a primary source for people looking to canvass the various stories of the founding fathers.

SIR SLY band

Published 2/13/13
SIR SLY
Miner
@ The Casbah

    There is no part of the music industry that isn't an absolute shit show in 2013 (except maybe publishing) but as someone who primarily interfaces with that industry as a record label partner, I am particularly fascinated by the world of music management.  Historically, succesful managers moved became record label owners- two primary examples being David Geffen and Irving Azoff.  Here is a quote from Frederic Dannen's national best seller, Hit Men- which is about the music industry during the halcyon days of glory (i.e. the 1980s):

   "Though artist management had made them rich, it was only a matter of time before Geffedn and Azoff leaped the bargaining table to become label presidents.  Almost all top managers and lawyers in the record business secretly hanker to run a label.  However powerful the artist representatives may be, the label bosses are the ones who hold the check book."
  "Lawyers and managers never forget, meanwhile, that their power is tenuous.  Artists may fire them or, even more likely, fall from the charts.  The average career of a rock artist is cruelly brief- five years is an achievement, and twenty years is a miracle." (pg. 141-142.)

   These days, the traffic is 100% in the other direction, particularly since record labels don't hire anyone ever these days.  On the other hand, there are plenty of ex-A&R types working as managers. The difficulty of being a manager is that you don't get paid unless the Artist gets paid, and the Artist isn't going to get paid unless they are very, very successful and even then...if you get them after they hook up with an indie label- poof- there goes a huge pot of money.  So I'm never surprised when a manager comes between a label I work with and a band they are releasing- that is the natural order of things.  It's like being mad at Nature for the weather- your time is better spent trying to understand it then being angry at it for what it does to you.


   I'm bringing all this up because the only reason I went to last night's show is because I was curious about "what it takes" to get picked up by Monotone Management- and Sir Sly is the most recent act to be picked up by Monotone Management. I'm always curious to see what people who are actually successful in the music industry are interested in, and what they decide to spend time and energy on.  Monotone Management of course, is the home of Jack White, Vampire Weekend, The Shins and Foster The People.

Kate Miner

  First up at last night's free show was Los Angeles indie-folk act Miner.  Miner essentially treads the same sonic space as Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes.  Now, they aren't original, but man- think about the potential upside- FM radio and actual record sales for one.  It's not too hard to draw comparisons to Grammy Album Of The Year Winner Lumineers or Mumford & Sons.  It's not music I listen to, but I literally saw dollar signs on top of the heads of the gently swaying crowd.

Miner band

  As I've said before, originality in music is highly, highly, highly overrated- what you want is a twist on something with an established sales track record, and when you are using Edward Sharpe, The Lumineeers & Mumford and Sons as your benchmarks the upside is unlimited. Maybe they make it, maybe they don't but it's hard to imagine that one could lose money putting out an LP on Miner.  Actually, it's impossible to imagine losing money on such an LP.

 They should consider changing their name to something like the Miner Family Singers though- so it's more obvious to casual music listeners what they are about.  Miner sounds like a band on Dischord.

  Headliners SIR SLY lost about half the crowd that was there to see Miner (score a point for Miner.)  They are a five piece- singer/guitarist, lead guitarist, bassist, drummer and key/synths guy- all dudes. To say that they are they are polished is a mild understatement- they are slick like a California freeway after the first rain of the year.  The focus of SIR SLY is clearly the singer/guitarist who fronts the band-   and the sound has obviously been crafted for maximum impact on alt rock FM radio.  Paul Lester of the London Guardian called them a "Chillwave Coldplay" but you could also just call them a super pro synth pop act and leave Coldplay out of it.  Maroon 5- also a comparison made by the London Guardian and also apt, although the singer will have to ditch the guitar and pop off his shirt to really merit a comparison to Adam Levine.

 All told it was pretty darn easy to see why Monotone Management is fucking with  SIR SLY- they sound exactly like the kind of band that gets signed to a major label in 2013.  I'm sure both bands have a viable future ahead of them due to their combination of professional grade sound and performance chops. I say, "Good luck on your journey gentlemen, and may the odds be ever in your favor."

  Oh last thought- having a live drummer play drum pads instead of actual drums seems like a solid move in 2013- like the drum break in Phil Collins In The Air Tonight:

  You can't go wrong with that sound.

Love this Dirty Beaches poster from a Hong Kong Show in 2013

Published 2/22/13
Dirty Beaches announced some 2013 UK Tour Dates:

May
18 4 St. Petersburg, Russia - Модный клуб Грибоедов(FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE)
19 4 Moscow, Russia - P.P.C.M. (FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE)
21 4 Kursk, Russia - Somewhere great (FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE)

5 5 - Newcastle, UK- The Cluny (FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE)
6 5 - Dundee, UK - DCA (FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE)
7 5 - Glasgow, UK - Nice 'n Sleazy  (FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE)
8 5 - Dublin, IE - The Workman's Club  (FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE)
9 5 - Liverpool, UK - The Shipping Forecast (FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE)
10 5 - Chester,  UK - The Compass (FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE)
11 5 - Manchester, UK - Soup Kitchen (FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE)
12 5 - Leeds,UK - Brudnell Social Club (FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE)
14 5 - Brussels, BE - AB Cafe (FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE)
16 5 - Amsterdam NED  - OT 301(FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE)
17 5 - Groningen NED  - Vera (FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE)
18 5 - Utrecht, NED - Le Guess Who Festival(FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE)
21 5 - Drifters/Love Is The Devil Album Release (FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE)
22 5 - Winterhur, SZE - Salzhaus (FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE)
24 5 - Limoges, FR - ccm John Lennon (FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE)
25 5 - Paris, FR - Saint-Ouen (FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE)
26 5 - Lyon, FR - Le Sonic (FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE)
27 5 - Turin, IT - Hotel Astoria (FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE)
28 5 - Ravena, IT - Hana Bi (FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE)
29 5 - Rome, IT - Circlo degli Artisti (FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE)

30 5 - Milan, IT - Video Sound Art Fetival (FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE)
31 5 - Berlin, GER - Festsaal Kreuzberg (FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE)
5 6 - Hamburg, GER - Hafenlang (FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE)
6 6 - Koln, GER - Reineke Fuchs (FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE)
7 6 - Munich, GER -Gallery Kullkcu (FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE)
8 7 -  Frankfurt, GER - Zoom Club (FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE)

  I don't know which date looks more interesting- Chester? or Dundee? (LINE OF BEST FIT POST)(FACT MAGAZINE)

Jeremy Irvine playing Pip in the 2012 adaptation of Charles Dickens Great Expectations

Published 3/8/13
The Dickens World
by Humphry House
Oxford Paperbacks No. 9
p. 1941


    Even though Charles Dickens was a huge popular success as soon as his books came out and in many ways the first  truly international literary celebrity (Sir Walter Scott didn't do a reading tour of the United States and Charles Dickens did); critical acclaim lagged by nearly a century.  During the early 20th century critical taste was with the sophisticated proto modernism of Henry James and the pure modernism of James Joyce- Dickens was considered to be merely a popular author.

 This began to change in the mid 20th century and The Dickens World by Humphry House- originally published by Oxford University Press in 1941- was one of the first works of criticism to take Dickens seriously without claiming that he was unduly sentimental/sappy/not worth serious thought.

Gillian Anderson playing Ms. Havisham in BBC 2012 adaptation of Charles Dickens Great Expectations

  This leads to the question of how one rehabilitates or establishes the critical reputation of a popular artist a century after the author died.  House's The Dickens World is largely a project of establishing a context for obtaining a deeper understanding of the complexity of "The Dickens World."   Charles Dickens was writing classic hits for a couple decades and he was writing during a time of great change.

  Before critics started taking Dickens seriously it was held that he had a simplistic, sentimental view of the world and that this point of view made his characters and plots simplistic.  Certainly Dickens reflected the taste of the audience during the time he was writing, but the assertion of thematic simplicity is shown by House to be false.

  As the title implies, The Dickens World take the reader through the different aspects of existence in the early mid 19th century and how that influence Dickens writing.  Notable are chapters on "Religion" and two whole chapters on "Economy: Domestica and Political."   Chief among the observations that House makes is that Dickens started writing before money craziness took hold of society in the 1840s, and then he witnessed this change- and this made it's way into his fiction even though his characters APPEARED to identify with an older era.

  House also highlights how the morality of Dickens was a welcome contrast to the conventional morality of the period, and how Dickens competed successfully with the religious literature that dominated the literary marketplace prior to the emergence of the novel as a popular art form.



Published 3/25/13
Dickens & His Readers:
 of Novel Criticism Since 1836
 by George H. Ford
p. 1965
The Norton Library edition

   This books appears to be utterly forgotten in light of the deserted Amazon Product Page.  That is a pity because I happen this book is pretty relevant for the big data era we currently happen.  Specifically, it is relevant for obtaining a proper understanding of Charles Dickens and his relationship to his readers and his critics.

   I agree with M.H. Abrams and his schematic regarding critical theories of art, pictured above.   The thing about that scheme is that almost 100% of art criticism focuses on the relationship between one aspect to another aspect, but rarely is the Audience considered, whether they be critics or fans, or both.

  But this book is unique as far as I can tell because of the detailed consideration of the RECEPTION of Charles Dickens by his different Audiences, popular and critical.   Writing in the 1950s,  Ford is perched on the precipice of an explosion in esteem for Charles Dickens.   According to Ford, Dickens reached a critical nadir in the 1920s and 1930s when he was derided by critics (who often asserted that a popular audience no longer read Dickens, i.e. that he was unpopular.)

Scrooge McDuck

   Charles Dickens was, above all, a popular phenomenon.  He was an Artist critics came to embrace only after his popularity with the general reading Audience was perfectly clear.   The popular success of the early Charles Dickens novels made everyone sit up and take notice.  Dickens success was such that he helped elevate the Novel as an Art Form from something that literary critics treated with derision to the rising Art form that came to dominate the both the market for literature as well as the market for literary criticism.

Charles Dickens Little Nell

  After the initial acceptance,  Charles Dickens had one notable popular failure- Martin Chuzzlewit.   Chuzzlewit was published after his most popular, least enduring work, The Old Curiosity Shop.  The Old Curiosity Shop had the archetypical example of "bad" Charles Dickens- Little Nell.  Little Nell would become a symbol of the saccharine sentimentality that plagued much of his early work.

  Ford argues in Dickens & His Readers that the failure of Martin Chuzzlewit was based on it being such a digression in subject matter and tone from his prior success.  In other words, Dickens failed to meet the expectations of his popular Audience.   But again- critics mirrored rather then shaped the reception of the popular Audience.  Today, of course, Martin Chuzzlewit is considered a top five Charles Dickens title and The Old Curiosity Shop is not popular.

  An interesting chapter in Dickens & His Readers handles the way the English literary critical establishment handled the emergence of the Russian trio of Dovstoyevsky, Turgenev & Tolstoy, the French naturalism of Zola & Flaubert and the homegrown sophistication of George Eliot.  All three of these forces were in play by the 1880s, which was also the beginning of a generation long decline in esteem for Charles Dickens by critics, if not the reading the public.

  All three of these trends shared a more adult, sophisticated take on the Novel.  Out were the broad comedy and emotion of Charles Dickens, in was the delicate contemplation of inner existence and human motive.  Critics were anxious to argue that the Novel had "grown up" and this view required Charles Dickens as a foil.

Oliver Twist

   One fact that becomes clear with the ebb and flow of the relationship between Charles Dickens and his critics:  Critics liked to make the claim that the popular Audience had stopped reading Dickens at various points in time but the continued sales strength of all of his works would tend to rebut that claim.  In fact, despite the rise and fall of critical esteem, the "collected works" of Charles Dickens was a household staple in countries from England, to the United States, to France, to Germany.  Like, Dickens would be the only Author that people would ever read.  Like, people would re-read all of his books every couple of years- these were behaviors that have persisted among his Audience for over a century and a half.

  In light of Dickens' proven Audience pleasing talents, I'm inclined to favor him over the serious minded Naturalism/Realism of the late 19th/early 20th century.  I'm talking, Thomas Hardy, Henry James- the really, really, boring novels that crop up during the transition from the late Victorian to the early Modern period of literature. To these people, Dickens was a kind of a clown.  But you know what: People don't give a fuck about Henry James today, and Charles Dickens is an international literary saint of the highest order.  I'm with Charles Dickens.   Fuck Henry James.

Published 4/15/13

Watch Waterpark by Evan Prosofsky w/ Dirty Beaches OST

Shorts on Sundays: Waterpark on Nowness.com.

  Here is something else that happened totally independent of anything I do or tell people to do- you can watch the Evan Prosofsky directed Waterpark- which is a documentary about a water park in Canada- with an OST by Dirty Beaches.  I've encourage Alex in this area. Who wants to be touring night clubs for the rest of their life? Movies seem like a cushier, not to mention unionized, gig. (GORILLAVSBEAR)

Published 4/23/13

Relevant Search: Internet Art/Net Art


INTERNET ART/NET ART WIKIPEDIA
RACHEL GREENE INTERNET ART AMAZON PRODUCT PAGE

Relevant information.

Published 5/20/13

Dirty Beaches - Casino Lisboa (Official Video)

 So proud to be a part of this!  Dirty Beaches Drifters/Love Is The Devil is in stores today in the EU/UK, tomorrow in the US.  US tour this fall.

The First Unitarian Church in Los Angeles

Published 6/22/13

First Unitarian Church (f/ Ariel Pink)

DO LA party
Sponsored by Goose Island Beer

  I love a new venue and if the invite includes free beer (courtesy the lovely people at Goose Island Beer, Chicago's Craft Beer) and industry networking, SO MUCH THE BETTER.  Also, I happen to love driving between San Diego and Los Angeles- call me crazy.

Court Yard at First Unitarian Church in Los Angeles

  The First Unitarian Church is located west of Downtown Los Angeles, near the intersection of W 9th and Vermont Ave.  There are three separate spaces:  a gymnasium type social space, a church/venue and a lovely open air court yard that really made the night.  The venue is seated and it gets hot inside but it was a nice place for a mixed all ages/21+ show.

  On street parking is scarce but valet was provided.  I wanted to write about the Goose Island Matilda that I had.  The Matilda is a Belgian Style Pale Ale and uh... it was pretty solid.  I could have had a half dozen but driving so I couldn't.  Goose Island has a wide selection of fine beers and ales.. and last night people were saying positive things about Honker's Ale.  I would order Goose Island products in a bar scenario: it was crafty but not TOO crafty.

  Ariel Pink was ok.  He acts like he is on drugs and doesn't like to shower- more power to him as far as I'm concerned, I'm just saying.  I would def go back to First Unitarian Church for another summertime show.  In winter it might be too cold, but hey in LA- probably not?  Last night it was beautiful night that made me glad to be alive.

Published 8/28/13

List of Important Japanese Films 1950-1973


     I think movie reviews of Japanese films are the least popular subject I cover on my blog.  So far I've watched six films via the Criterion Collection: Yojimbo, Sanjuro, Kwaidan, Samurai I & II & Good Morning.   Then I've got three scheduled in September: High and Low, Rashomon & The Seven Samurai.  Then I've got three scheduled in October: Double Suicide, The Hidden Fortress & Samurai III.  Yeah.  I spread them out because they are so very, very unpopular.  The Ozu review (Good Morning) got 17 page views.  17.  That is embarrassing.  The most popular review is Yojimbo, published in June, with 84 views.

  I figure... maybe it is because I'm not doing Japanese cinema justice, that I am ignorant.  The same goes for many of the discrete areas of world cinema: Italian neo-realism would be another example.  I don't see any value to watching these movies other then them being great art.  It truly seems like not a soul I know in the world could give two shits about Japanese film, but does that mean I ignore it?

  Last time I was in Los Angeles I went to a few used books stores to look for a cheap, college-level text that provided summaries of the different genres of World Cinema.  I found A History of Film by Jack C. Ellis, published by Prentice-Hall, which I believe is an educational house.  Each chapter ends with a list of the important films, and I think it is quite a useful resource for what I'm doing.

  Another interesting aspect of Japanese films on Criterion Collection/Hulu Plus is that they are 100% streaming.  There are some countries where it is almost 100% the other way- films from the U.K.- for example- very few of those titles are available streaming.

  Ultiimately though I think one of the things you do if you are actually into Art vs. just being a poser who likes to hang out with cool people, is you take it on yourself to learn about new kinds of art with which were previously unfamiliar.  And Japanese cinema fits that bill.  So the fact that it is unpopular to readers of this blog is irrelevant.

 Here is the list for Japanese films between 1950-1973 (Date of review)

1950
Rashomon (Kurosawa) (September 11th, 2013)

1952
Ikiru (Kurosawa) Criterion Collection #221 !
The Life of O'Haru (Mizoguchi) Criterion Collection #664 !

1953
Gate of Hell (Kinugasa)Criterion Collection #653 !
Tokyo Story (Ozu) Criterion Collection #217 !
Ugetsu (Mizoguchi) Criterion Collection #309 !

1954
Chickamatsu Monogatari (Mizoguchi)
The Bailiff (Mizoguchi) Criterion Collection #386 !
Seven Samurai (Kurosawa)(September 18th, 2013)

1956
The Harp of Burma (Ichikawa) Criterion Collection #379 !

1957
The Lower Depths (Kurosawa) Criterion Collection #239 !
The Throne of Blood (Kurosawa) Criterion Collection #190 !

1958
Conflagration (Ickikawa)

1959
Fires on the Plain (Ichikawa) Criterion Collection #378 !

1961
An Autumn Afternoon (Ozu) Criterion Collection #446 !
The Human Condition (Kobayashi) Criterion Collection #480 !
Onibaba (Shindo) Criterion Collection #226 !
Woman of the Dunes (Teshighara) Criterion Collection #394 !

1965
Red Beard (Kurosawa) Criterion Collection #159 !

1968
Death by Hanging (Oshima)
Diary of a Shinjuku Thief (Oshima)

1969
Boy (Oshima)
Double Suicide (Shinoda) (October 7th, 2013)

1970
Dodeska-den (Kurosawa) Criterion Collection #465 !

1971
The Ceremony (Oshima)

1975
Dersu Uzala (Kurosawa)
Kaeski (Kobayashi)
Realm of the Senses (Oshima) Criterion Collection #446 !

! = Available on Hulu Plus


Published 9/13/13
The Story of Film - An Odyssey
Available on Netflix Streaming
Released 2012
The Story of Film - An Odyssey New York Times Review January 2012
The Story of Film - An Odyssey - IMDB
The Story of Film - An Odyssey - Rotten Tomatoes

  I DVR'ed episode 2 of this sprawling 900 minute plus television documentary by critic/narrator Mark Cousins about the history of film.  I was so impressed by the DVR episode that I searched "The Story of Film - An Odyssey streaming" on Google, and quickly discovered that it was on Netflix streaming. I watched the first two episodes a little bit each night this week and I found this documentary really enthralling on a number of levels, but mostly because Cousins actually seems to be in touch with the last 50 years of film criticism and non-Hollywood film, so he's giving what is essentially the Criterion Collection history of film.

  Cousins posits fairly early on that this is a revisionist or alternative history of Cinema, assuming that the main Hollywood driven narrative is the recognizable narrative for most viewers.  However, for me it is the history of Cinema, not a competing story.  Hollywood still plays the central role in a history of film that includes non Hollywood film, if only because the Audience for non-Hollywood films  within the United States was negligible until after World War II.

 The two most interesting themes from the first two episodes of this monster documentary are the movement of film from being a "popular amusement" to an art form between 1900 and the 1920s.  The second is the analysis of the mainstream 1920s Hollywood aesthetic as being "Romantic" and not "Classical."    Although he doesn't really delve into the terminology, it is clear that he is using Romantic and Classical with the meanings established in 19th and 20th century art criticism.  So by Romantic he means Romantic like M.H. Abrams meant Romantic in his book, The Mirror & The Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition.

  Using Abrams Mirror/Lamp metaphor, Classicism sees art as a mirror and Romanticism sees art as a lamp.  Thus, for Cousins the Hollywood spectacle film of the 1920s, with it's soft lighting of starlets, emotive subject matter and over wrought set design, is the definition of Romantic and is about as "Classic" as a Wordsworth poem.  This whole analysis seems to play off of an understanding of the silent film era as being equivalent to "Classic" Hollywood.  I'm not sure that is a term that is really embraced by American audiences.  Being Northern Irish/British, Cousins comes from a different perspective on that question.

 The other interesting theme is the process by which film started as an amusement, something less then art, and evolved into a recognized art form by the teens/twenties of the twentieth century. Again, as a television type documentary, Cousins doesn't get into the mechanics of it, but he does show some early theaters- built before the movie "palaces" of the teens and 20s, and they look like the equivalent of video arcades.  Early theaters were often referred to as Nickelodeons, which is a compound word combining Nickel (price) and Odeon, which is what they called a theater in ancient Greece.

  The Story of Film is a must for anyone looking to dive into the Criterion Collection- because it shares a similar perspective on world cinema and many of the non-American works discussed are represented in the Criterion Collection.

Emma Watson does her Vanessa Hudgens in the Bling Ring, d. Sofia Coppola (2013)

Published 10/10/13

The Bling Ring (2013)
d. Sofia Coppola
Theatrical release June 21st, 2013


   Wow so people really didn't dig The Bling Ring did they?  What the fuck were they expecting from a Sofia Coppola joint about this subject?  Citizen Kane or something?  People be hating on Sofia Coppola but she knows how to portray contemporary mores in more or less the same fashion as a 19th century English novelist like The Bronte sisters or Jane Austen.  Her women are young, vulnerable but with huge social influence.  They have been the subject of Art since they came into existence at the beginning of time.  Each of Coppola's films details some woman at the cross roads of irrelevance and power.


  The Bling Ring is her most explicit foray into the relationship of young women to power.  Here, the setting is modern day Los Angeles, specifically the subset of Los Angeles residents who are there to "make it."  The girls/women of The Bling Ring exist outside of a framework of morality, they are "home schooled" by a Mom who follows the "spiritual" tenets of The Secret.  They are modern day Maenads, young female followers of Dionysus ready for a frenzy or down for whatever.

  Like Spring Breakers, The Bling Ring is best viewed without reference to Christian morality.  Whatever you want to say about the movie, "Thou Shall Not Steal" does not come up in conversation at all, for the entire movie.  The gleeful amorality of contemporary youth culture is in no way a novel subject for film, but Coppola deserves unacknowledged credit for opening a window on this most recent iteration of a theme that requires regular updating.

  The non mise en scene aspects of Coppola's work always fascinate- her soundtracks have been influential since Air scored a huge break-out in the aftermath of the Virgin Suicides.  Coppola outpaces other potential filmic/musical influencers by virtue of impeccable taste and an apparently excellent licensing department.  I would even argue that The Bling Ring is the superior soundtrack vs. Spring Breakers.  Spring Breakers and Bling Ring both have M.I.A.'s Bad Girls, which is obviously the theme song for this genre of film.  Only The Bling Ring opens with Sleigh Bells Crown on the Ground over the credits.

 I'm inclined to think that cinema at it's best is a kind of fun-house mirror, reflecting and distorting truth/reality and showing it back to people (for 10 USD plus a pop) so I think some of the negative reaction to The Bling Ring is from people who are like that and didn't like what they saw.  A bold strategy for Coppola as a director, and I think The Bling Ring is a film that will be appreciated more in the future as more people get a chance to actually like it.

 I also think that Coppola is right on in depicting the young upper middle class women of Southern California as a group of beautiful gangsters.  Gleeful amorality doesn't even begin to describe it. And the sound track, wow, evocative of the milieu.

Published 10/12/13

New San Diego Main Library/Central Library

330 Park Blvd.

  The new San Diego Main Library/Central Library replaces the decrepit prior Central Library, a claustrophobia inducing Public Works Administration holdover favored by members of our Vagrant-American population.  It is no way an exaggeration or slur to simply state the fact that the old Central Library smelt strongly of stale human urine.  Truth be told, I haven't been into a non-legal library since I graduated from law school in San Francisco more then a decade ago (and oof.)



  There is something charming about opening a new library in 2013, just as books and reading seem to be on the verge of extinction.  The new location is excellent, across the street from Petco Park and located near trolley and bus lines.  The interior has an indoor/outdoor design appropriate to the weather in San Diego.  The first three stories have a spacious open-air atrium that invites the casual user inside.

  Plenty of computers as one expects, but also all their books on display.  I wouldn't say that I was impressed with the collection, but fuck man, it's a brand new library.  I've been reading public domain novels on my Kindle for like three years so it really opens up some new opportunities in literary criticism and history books.

  If you are a downtown/Golden Hill/South Park/Barrio Logan this is a great opportunity to renew your love affair with the library.

Published 10/30/13

The Relationship of Astrology to Babylonian Star Worship

   Star worship is a fairly common spiritual/religious theme.  In Western culture, it most often take the form of "astrology," which in terms of esteem is held somewhere between legitimate "new age"  spiritual belief and parlor trick depending on who you talk to.  However the Astrology column in the local daily that focuses on Birthday horoscopes does not represent the great history and, frankly, majesty of the larger category of "star worship."

 To understand the depth of star worship, it's best to start at the beginning with the practices of Babylonian Star Worship.  Babylonians are a key world-historical culture because they are the first civilization with writing who spoke a language from a contemporary language family, Semitic. Semitic is the family of Hebrew and Arabic, and Akkadian is the earliest known example. Akkadian is now extinct, but it was "succeeded" by a different Semitic language, Aramaic, which was the language of the Assyrian Empire.  The Assyrians conquered much of the Middle East and held it from roughly 1300 BC to 1000 BC.  By the end of this period, the language of the Assyrian conquerors had become the lingua franca of the entire Middle East, much in the same way Latin was during the Roman Empire and the way English is in the west.  Akkadian itself was the prior Lingua Franca but it was surpassed by Aramaic in the west, and in the east it fell victim to the Persian invasion.  The Persians, of course, spoke a language of Indo-European extraction and thus were outside the Semitic linguistic sphere.

 Babylonian astronomy/star worship both precedes and runs concurrently with the Assyrians but Babylonians and Assyrians were separate related peoples/languages like Spanish/French.  The Assyrians would have essentially received Babylonian/Akkadian texts intact and there would have been interaction and overlap between two religions, with Babylonian's "leading" and Assyrians "following." (1)


NOTES

(1)  From the Wikipedia Page:

Old Babylonian astronomy refers to the astronomy that was practiced during and after the First Babylonian Dynasty (ca. 1830 BC) and before the Neo-Babylonian Empire (ca. 626 BC).
The Babylonians were the first to recognize that astronomical phenomena are periodic and apply mathematics to their predictions. Tablets dating back to the Old Babylonian period document the application of mathematics to the variation in the length of daylight over a solar year.

Centuries of Babylonian observations of celestial phenomena are recorded in the series of cuneiform tablets known as theEnûma Anu Enlil—the oldest significant astronomical text that we possess is Tablet 63 of the Enûma Anu Enlil, the Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa, which lists the first and last visible risings of Venus over a period of about 21 years. It is the earliest evidence that planetary phenomena were recognized as periodic.

The MUL.APIN contains catalogues of stars and constellations as well as schemes for predicting heliacal risings and settings of the planets, and lengths of daylight as measured by a water clock, gnomon, shadows, and intercalations. The Babylonian GU text arranges stars in 'strings' that lie along declination circles and thus measure right-ascensions or time intervals, and also employs the stars of the zenith, which are also separated by given right-ascensional differences.[5] There are dozens of cuneiform Mesopotamian texts with real observations of eclipses, mainly from Babylonia.

   This section establishes Babylonian astronomy/astrology as dates to 1830 BC- almost five hundred years before the Assyrian empire arose.