Extraordinary Rendition (of this song)

This entry dedicated to my wonderful mother, who hopefully isn't aware of this blog.

Good Night, Sweet Prince

A couple of weeks ago, while I was at work, our (my roommates' and my) cat, Eliot "Three-Jay" Marcoullier, was struck and killed by a car, or an SUV, or a lorry, on Minneapolis' busiest thoroughfare.  It was a heartbreaking experience for all of us.  I loved the little guy to pieces, and the following video is dedicated entirely to him.

Here's a link for those who like their videos in better-than-youtube quality.

The music, by the way, is Duster Bennett's brutally moving "Everyday".

In Loving Memory

Three-Jay

2008-2009

This is Gonna Be a Good Summer

I can tell because my mood today is a mix of this



and this.

Crazy Love - Van Morrison & Bob Marley

Two Facelifts for Sister Jeffrey

As I have become bored recently with this blog, I've decided to, yet again, make a few changes.  I'm trying out a few new names, because I think the Chicago Public Radio pun is getting a little old.  Once I find one I really like, I'll change my URL.  

Content-wise, I'm going to try to shift away from bitching about my endlessly trivial life and focus more on some of my passions:  nuclear explosions, naked girls from the '50's, and pedal steel guitars.  Expect things to get a whole lot more pretentious around here.

Monsters of Bach

I've started listening to only classical music lately, as much as someone can really "only" voluntarily listen to one kind of music. Maybe it's just that I'm going through a non-musical phase, but I don't think so. I don't really miss rock n' roll or pop or even jazz all that bad; and I think I would miss classical quite a bit if it were somehow stripped away from me. Maybe it's because I've been spoon-fed the young-people stuff since I was little by my parents and friends. It's like some weird, weird psychological thing whereby in order to gain independence from my immediate circumstance, I run to the biggest status quo in music. I think it must be the same way Alice Cooper became a Republican. This is not to say I'm a musical Luddite; I still prefer composers of whom there are photographs to composers of whom there are only portraits. I'm just sick of trying to keep up with the newest Santogold release as if I give a shit, and of keeping company with hipsters far hipper who will always be more on top of it than I am, and of being told that hearing a new song I like in a movie is the wrong, dumb people way to discover music. And I'm sick of tall, birdlike women and tall, birdlike men who wear quilted nylon coats and skinny jeans, teetering around Uptown like blueberries stuck on twigs, who go to progressive films and "care" about "tolerance" but who still have this whole bizarre, elitist Cult of Beauty thing going on, uniforms and all. Now, if anyone really reads this, I'm likely to catch flak about never having been a true "music person" in the first place, an accusation about which I don't PARTICULARLY care. It might also be you could criticize my syntax and word choices today as "pretentious," which is fine. I'd rather be a pretentious jerk with a vocabulary grounded in dictionary English than just another internet dolt, lolling and fapping around in a deep, deep well of stupid, stupid people with no individual personalities or thoughts.

Space, Space.

A bunch of interesting stuff I've been running across lately:

The Barbarian Group is a weird design/advertising firm that makes all sorts of interesting digital gizmos and software.  They're probably most notable for designer Robert Hodgin's brilliant, beautiful Magnetosphere visualizer.

These dudes are just plain fucking awesome.

Take One Look and Die

High school fucking sucks. God this blog is awesome.





Ace Of Spades

Sing; Sing a Song

Sleep Walk

Rather than my usual rant about something stupid, something irrelevant, or something I know nothing about, I will, for once, discuss what's really making me so angsty. I hate my life. At this moment, I can't fathom one positive thing. There is no joie de vivre, no pep, no pleasure, no anticipation. The idea of one more conscious minute is agonizing. I want for everyone in my life to stop caring about me so I can be done with it, so I can take my farewell ride with no regrets and no teary-eyed maidens at my back. None of the people to whom I've ever pledged my heart has ever wanted it. It is expected that we should cling to life, but I feel I am instead shackled to it. Perhaps this will change, but it's a deep, deep well I've excavated, and I'm not gazing up for want of a lifeline.

I’m Gonna Cack Ya

I’m in that goldilocks zone of boredom where I’m too bored to thumb through my DVD library for something to watch, but not bored enough to do schoolwork. That’s Blog Country right there. These moments do not come often, as is demonstrated so clearly by my spotty attendance record with this here journal, and when they do come, it’s not guaranteed that I’ll have anything interesting to say.

I was at a bookstore with my sister last weekend and in their vinyl LP section they had five or six records with titles to the effect of “Songs of the Third Reich”. I guess they, along with all the other records at the shop, came from the same gentleman’s collection. He also had copies of “MacArthur Park” and “Purple Rain”, so I imagine, to his credit, that the Nazi records were more a reflection of his interest in history than his preferences in music or racial purity.

I finally brought myself to walk into American Apparel this week. Since I am not a tall, stringbean-like man with a wall-eyed expression or a swan-like woman with grandma glasses and a Pocahontas headband, I felt more than a little out of place. But I had assumed this would happen going in. What I hadn’t assumed was that the dressing rooms would consist of a series of voting booths at the back of the store, made just barely private by thin white curtains. In my little booth, I couldn’t help but hear the lady employees, all dressed like Peter Pan, talking about making their boyfriends cry as they folded clothes. Another thing I hadn’t assumed about American Apparel was that the employees would be so nice. I guess they must not ship them in by crate from L.A. along with the clothes, huh? Ha-ha; Minnesota is clearly better.

My mother sends me letters every week। She mentioned in her last message that she felt bad that she hadn’t been keeping up in her weekly writing. This made me feel awful, because I have never in my entire life written a letter to her. It would be too picture-perfect, too functional of me to write her a response telling her she’s the most important person in my life, or how grateful I am for everything she’s given me (which is almost everything I have), or that when I think of home I mostly think of her.

I don’t like Joanna Newsom. It’s not that I don’t respect her abilities as an artist, or that I don’t like harp music, or that I’m jealous that she’s only twenty-six and already way more hip than I could ever hope to be (although that is troubling to me). It’s that I feel she goes out of her way to sound like a muppet that bothers me.

I’ll try to put some interesting content up in the coming few weeks। I have some neat projects I have to do for school, and they ought to be pertinent enough blog material।

As Captain James Tiberius Kirk and Commander William Thomas Riker begin to slash their way through the dense, alien jungle, they barely have time to wonder why they are appearing together on the same television series before they are AMBUSHED by SAVAGE, BACKWARDS MONGREL-MEN (and a dinosaur)! ALL IN NEXT WEEK’S EPISODE: PLANET OF THE MONGREL-MEN.*

*“TWOK Captain Kirk™” and “Commander Riker™” action figures intellectual property of Gene Roddenberry. “Mongrel-Man™” action figure property of LucasArts™. “TYRANNOSAURUS RES™” figure provided by China™. Foreground scenery provided by Nerf™. Background scenery created with Crayola™.

Songs that Defined My Summer

In the past, I've always been of the opinion that lists like this one were simply pretentious attempts both to impress the reader with the writer's impeccable taste in music and also to instill in the writer a certain sense of smuggadocio. But now that I'm a hot-shit college sophomore with a taste for Canadian Club and a painful awareness of whose sleeves are rolled up Italian-style (thanks, GQ), I think I've scored enough undeserved self-satisfaction to make my own list. It's also been the first summer of my life where something very embarrassing (like Coldplay or Death Cab, both music taste death sentences but also guilty pleasures of mine) hasn't marred my seasonal score. I've only bought three new albums this year, one of which was, I admit, Viva la Vida; but the other two, Beck's Modern Guilt and Nine Inch Nails' The Slip (which I guess I didn't technically buy). Everything else on the list was either something less new of which I hadn't previously been aware or something from my own library that hadn't previously caught my ear. I tend to discover new music I already own all the time, I guess as a result of my bad habit of not listening to albums all the way through when I buy them. Anyway, enough about my sensibilities as an audience. Here you go:

Sonic Youth: Incinerate
I know, I know. This is about as accessible a song as you'll find in the Sonic Youth catalog. And I suppose it could be counted against me that the first time I heard it was at a Youth concert when they played with the Flaming Lips. I couldn't get around the observation that all their fans in the general admission crowd seemed so adamant about slam-dancing (even during breaks between songs) to grasp how awesome this track really is. It took a surprise listen on one of my most deliberately ignored radio stations, The Current, to get me into it. It's starting to be just un-cool enough to like Sonic Youth that I can allow myself to listen to them without feeling like a douchebag. Fleet Foxes will have to wait, though.

Beck: Round the Bend
Sea Change, which in general is probably Beck's most hated album of all time will probably be etched in as one of my top five albums of all time. I'd go so far as to say that this eerie, sinisterly melodic engineering masterpiece has had as much of an impact on my love of the American West (or at least my glamorized idea of it) as did my aunt who bought me embroidered boots, spurs and a six-shooter when I was visiting her in Oregon about a decade and a half ago. The album itself has been a mainstay of my collection for a couple of years now, but the song in question has only made me drool for the last few months, coinciding directly with my sudden infatuation with well-loved killer Charles Starkweather. The bleakness of the song matches my vision of the stark landscapes of Nebraska and Wyoming, black and white highways, classic cars, non-filtered cigarettes, blah blah blah.

Vashti Bunyan: Glow Worms
Here's a song I listened to and eventually learned with the intention of playing it for a certain woman in my life. I never did and probably never will, and I fear this strikes a poor precedent for the path of the rest of the relationship.

Nine Inch Nails: Right where it Belongs
I've always liked this song, but I've been listening to it more often than usual these last few months, partially in preparation for the NIN show on August 2nd (which was canceled; THANKS, TRENT). I guess I also listened to it a lot this summer because I know the lyrics to it, and I've been on a big singalong jag recently.

Brahms: Allegro con Giocoso III
I fucking LOVED There Will Be Blood, and for a little while, I actually tried to build the wardrobe of a 1920's petroleum tycoon, but I soon realized that I don't have the financial heft, even in 1920's dollars, required for such an undertaking. I did, however, have the 99 cents required for the third part of Brahms' soul-igniting violin concerto, which is the last piece of music in the film. I invariably find myself listening to this in my car, steering with one hand and vigorously conducting the orchestra on the road in front of me with the other.

Flight of the Conchords: Think About It
Here's one I memorized by placing my computer next to the shower stall and turning the speakers all the way up. I guess what I like about it, atypically brilliant melodies aside, is that it makes fun of everything I worry about in this sick world, but somehow keeps a certain reverence that tells us maybe we should care a little more.

Elton John: Tiny Dancer
Another one I listened to a lot because I knew the lyrics, but also just a really great fucking song. I think it will make a good karaoke challenge some night when I'm trashed.

Bob Dylan: Simple Twist of Fate
I've listened to this many times in the past, but it struck a new chord this summer as the aforementioned woman in my life has nested comfortably in the better part of my thoughts. I'd like to think the fact that I've been able to connect this song to my life in a meaningful way means that I'm starting to embrace a more adult (and therefore, more authentic, right?) idea of love, although I realize that Dylan probably wrote it with a wistful sense of nostalgic, youthful romance in the air.

The Seeds: Can’t Seem to Make You Mine
Take all the subtlety and smoothness out of the last song, and you've got a good picture of this song to work with. This one's a bit ornery and twangy and garage-y, but it's great. And yes, the first time I heard it was in the AXE commercial.

David Bowie: Quicksand
I won't pretend I know entirely what this song is about, but I just love it. I didn't discover it until I burned Hunky Dory for my nephew and we (I say we because, although he is one year old, he stayed in the room while it was playing) listened to it all the way through.

Elliott Smith: Christian Brothers
Elliott Smith will probably be the last bastion of my whiny folk music phase.

Frédéric Chopin – Ballade No. 1 in G minor, Op. 23
I've never been good at adapting to the very much pragmatic system of naming music used by everybody back in the good old days. These damn kids are so used to their hooks and licks and jingles. So it's understandable if the exact piece of music I'm talking about doesn't come to mind when I reference it, even with a catchy title like Ballade No. 1 in G minor, Op. 23. You might remember it better as the woeful piano music that makes up the bulk of the soundtrack for The Pianist.

Beck: Chemtrails
I guess the fact that Beck released his new album about the same time I started to really like the kind of music on it means he's a year or two ahead of me in music taste. Bravo, Beck.

MGMT: Electric Feel
The return of disco music has coincided with my bitchy, dandy popinjay phase. Blame it on a simple twist of fate.

The Knife: Heartbeats (Live)
How I find something to love in a press-hating, shrill duo of Swedes with a penchant for Black Plague-era fashion and oscillating keyboards is something of a mystery. Or maybe not.

The Rolling Stones: Wild Horses
This song is so untouchably perfect to me that I can't say I know quite how to put down my feelings about it. Even the fact that Mick Jagger sort of stole it from Keith Richards and rewrote the lyrics to change its meaning altogether doesn't soil it for me.

Bon Iver: Flume
I only put this one in because it was playing on my iPod the only time I've ever been pulled over, which was some time in June, I think. I got off with a warning, so, you know, it's something of a good luck charm.

Daniel Johnston: Grievances
Again with that gulldarned woman.

Marvin Gaye: The Star-Spangled Banner
My hearing this song was maybe the only good thing to come out of either Nike or the Olympics in a long, long time. Leave it to Marvin Gaye to put some soul into the whitest song of all time, and to produce a few tears in the crowd while doing it. I'm no patriot in the traditional sense, but I just about lit up a dozen bottle rockets with a NASCAR lighter after I heard this the first time.

My apologies if this list was insufferably boring. But, as my former writing teacher (who must be thinking this blog is becoming a little him-centric by now) asked me, "if you don't like your own writing, why would you make other people read it?" I'm doing it because it took a long time to write, so someone had better well fucking appreciate it!

God DAMN You Are One Suave FUCKER

This is my first ever video blog post. Enjoy.


Sincerely,
Jeffrey Beaumont