The West Wing season 7

[spoilers ahead]

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I. More proof (were it needed) of how thoroughly this show has involved me: I knew it was coming, but still I actually had tears in my eyes not once but twice for Leo's death - first when Annabeth appears in tears, and then at the funeral service. We're not talking bucketloads here, but I've never had such a strong crying response to a tv show or a film before.

II. Also, I want to say something about me and Janeane Garofalo. Well, there's not much to say, really. Back in high school, I basically thought that she was too great for words (because of Reality Bites and Romy and Michelle, I think - Mystery Men too, maybe? Truth About Cats and Dogs was sweet but didn't make much of an impression.). Then I kind of forgot about her (was vaguely aware that she had taken up political activism or maybe had always been doing it; discovered that she was snarkily answering reader questions in the Believer). So anyway, it was a delight to see her pop up as a fast-talking, take-no-prisoners campaign strategist in this season and then to promptly take it all the way up to Josh.

III. What a great show this is. I'm sorry that it's over - but it may not be too long before I start again from the beginning...

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1 & 2 - 3, 4, 5 & 6

"Two Steps from the Middle Ages: Another Spunk Sampler"

Pretty good as far as these go. Best songs: Machine Translations - "Need A Miracle", Explosions in the Sky - "So Long, Lonesome", Meg Baird - "Dear Companion", The Besnard Lakes - "For Agent 13". Ted Leo & the Pharmacists' "Bomb Repeat Bomb" is rockin' too (in addition to great song title).

"1977" (IMP July 2007)

Befitting the year from which it draws its title, leads off with a punk blast (Ramones - Johnny Thunders & the Heartbreakers - Clash) and follows through with more of the same plus a bit of early post-punk ("Psycho Killer" - always raises a cheer when it pops up), industrial and ambient, winding up with a bit of sweetness (Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams") and a dash of Tom Waits ("I Never Talk To Strangers" and "Cinny's Waltz"). A real old snapshot of a time.

(from Salvatore in Italy)

Bob Dylan @ Rod Laver Arena, Sunday 19th August

I didn't have high expectations for this show - given the likely preponderance of new stuff and the probability that any old ones would be drastically reinterpreted, I expected it to be solid, nothing more...but I went anyway (a) just in case and (b) because it's Bob Dylan, man!

Anyhow, it was basically exactly as I expected - I didn't know all that many of the songs he played, and the classics that he did do ("Don't Think Twice, It's Alright", "Just Like A Woman", "Highway 61 Revisited") were basically flattened out and lacked the sheer pure thread which runs through each in their original recorded/lp cuts. Also, the sound quality kinda sucked.

On the plus side, there was an excellent banjo song near the middle which I would guess is called "Blind Willie McTell" or something similar and was the highlight, the band was very good - and, of course, it was Bob Dylan there on stage, singing his songs. Not a great concert experience by any stretch of the imagination - I actually found myself drifting in and out in patches, thinking about other things - but I'm glad I went.

(w/ Kevin)

Razorlight - Up All Night

Middling-to-mediocre 'alternative brit rock' circa 2003. "Golden Touch" is good, but that's pretty much it...it's not that the record is bad, I suppose, but just that it severely lacks any kind of spark.

cd86: 49 tracks from the birth of indie pop

Early indie pop classics and forgotten gems, spanning the years '84 through to '87 - jangle, fuzz, melody and 'plaint (I know, not a word - but it oughta be), c86 stuff obviously, and for the most part proudly wearing its influences on its collective sleeve. Double cd set - deliciously packaged and filled to the rafters with quality, most of it new to me though of course I know the sound and the attitude.

Faves: Primal Scream - "Velocity Girl", the Clouds - "Get Out Of My Dream", the Raw Herbs - "He Blows In", the Hit Parade - "You Didn't Love Me Then", Close Lobsters - "Just Too Bloody Stupid", Meat Whiplash - "Don't Slip Up", the Darling Buds - "If I Said", the Mighty Lemon Drops - "Like An Angel", and of course shining unimpeachable cuts from Talulah Gosh and the Jesus and Mary Chain.

Paul Auster - The New York Trilogy

One of the things that makes this trio of pieces at once so accessible and so ungraspable is the apparent clarity of their language and narratives - it's as if the reader, in seemingly so easily penetrating the surface of the text, finds themselves all at once to have come out on the other side while being none the wiser as to the meaning of what they have just encountered. So with that in mind, how might a literal reading of City of Glass, Ghosts and The Locked Room proceed?

Well, it would need to begin at the end, with the third of those, whose unnamed narrator says that he wrote all three, each representing different stages in his self-understanding (or something to that effect).

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Wrote the above some two or three weeks ago, then left it to sit, not particularly having the time to develop and think through the rest. In the mean time, we've book clubbed the trilogy, most of which was spent trying to work out what actually happens in the book(s) and how all the pieces fit together (I'm convinced at least by Andrew B's conjecture that all three are written by Fanshawe - although of course that's without taking 'Paul Auster' out of his box, though it's probably not possible to arrive at the reading whereby F is indeed the author without an awareness of the existence of PA 'within' and 'outside' City of Glass and the trilogy as a whole). Discussing the book(s) was an experience much like reading it/them (see above); The New York Trilogy is at once both a complete tease and extremely satisfying. I feel that I've almost grasped it - but full understanding is still just beyond my reach.

Isobel Campbell - Milkwhite Sheets

Surprisingly, quite a left turn from Amorino - and a successful one, too. Very hushed even by her quiet standards - so wispy as to seem barely there for much of the time, like diaphanous little nursery rhymes edged all about with an old-fashioned folk-ness. And good, too.

Frank Black - 93-03

These be the (solo) Frank Black songs I'd heard before: "Los Angeles" and "Man of Steel" - both of them naggingly tuneful and memorable, and solid 9/10 songs (ie, very very good). This best of, though, is only so-so - it's very uneven, and there are relatively few highlights, scattered at intervals. "Headache" is fun, but generally I like the cruisier, more melodic ones more ("You Ain't Me", "I Don't Want To Hurt You", "All My Ghosts", "Bad Harmony" & ors)...in any case, definitely more good than bad, if not thrillingly so.

The Essential Janis Joplin

I've been known to describe Janis as a goddess, and I'm gonna stand by that. She's one of those rare musicians - rare artists - who penetrates deeper than the common run, whose work genuinely partakes of greatness. I don't usually listen to her stuff over and over - it doesn't work like that. But whenever I do listen, I know.

(also: Pearl)

Bob Dylan - Modern Times

Modern (ie backward-looking and a little bit timeless) Dylan-rock-and-roll. I know the critics jumped up and down about this one, but to me it's impossible to hear the record out of the context of everything else the man has recorded - it makes sense when set against that background, but has only a limited amount to offer outside of it...playing with artificial distinctions maybe, but that's the best way to make sense out of my response to it - it's listenable, and yet not especially captivating, and all I can think while listening to it is that Modern Times is a latter-day Bob Dylan album. In a more receptive phase I might be more taken with it, 'cause it certainly has that Dylan-ness - but that's how it sounds to me now.

Amy Sedaris - I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride; if I'd known that this was a recipe book, I wouldn't have bought it -- well, it's not entirely a recipe book (if it were, I'd have only myself to blame for bringing it home anyway), but a lot more of it's taken up by recipes than I'd anticipated, and accordingly much less by New York sass than I'd hoped. Still, I enjoyed it and perhaps the recipes will even come in useful (though healthiness doesn't seem to be a major, or even a minor consideration in their putting together, so maybe not so much then).

The Man From London

Black and white, almost two and a half hours long, existential: this seemed very likely to be good. Unfortunately, though, it's not, in all of the ways that one would expect (if, of course, one were to expect it to not be good in the first place).

Saw it with Vanessa; afterwards, we both craved chocolate (chocolate ice cream in my case) - it was that kind of movie.

The Rough Guide to Astor Piazzolla

Casting around for a description of my current daily patterns for the benefit of an overseas comrade about a week ago, came up with this: "Listening to a lot of Astor Piazzolla (perhaps you know him? An Argentinian tango innovator - 'tango ballet', eg - very dramatic and swirling and energetic and melancholy, &c, &c), and dancing in my bedroom when the sun comes out." Not really so much of the bedroom dancing this last week, with work kickin' my ass a bit again, but still plenty of the Piazzolla by way of this compilation, which reveals a lighter and more playful side to him than Tango Ballet and in so doing has cracked his music wide open to me (much as I've always liked Tango Ballet, it's always been an album that I listen at long intervals rather than in an ongoing way), leaving me keen to explore further. Certain themes and motifs recur across songs and albums, but the ones which've most caught my ear are "Libertango", "Vuelvo al Sur" and "Los Suenos", all genius in their different ways.

"Dear Junior, I Miss You. <3 Senior (SXSW 2007)" (IMP - May 2007)

Seems a safe guess that the theme of this mix is 'acts who played SXSW in 2007', which translates to a setlist mostly made up of current indie faves - including several which I already knew and which are always welcome ("Thursday", "The Gulag Orkestar", "Young Folks", "Do The Whirlwind") - and an engaging listen.

The best of those that I hadn't heard before are the shimmer and groove of the Fratellis' "Flathead" (hadn't heard of them at all before) [edit 16/8/08: turns out this was actual Midlake's "Roscoe" - misled by an erroneous track listing!] and, in particular, Amy Winehouse's brilliant invocation of girl group swoon and drama (you only need to hear the first few bars to pick it up) mixed with hints of jazz and rock and roll circa the same era on "Back to Black" (I'd only previously heard "Rehab" of her stuff, and hadn't thought much of it). Also especially like Les Savy Fav's "The Sweat Descends" and the 1900s' sixties-dappled "Living the Medium Way".

(A replacement from the administrator for the May mix, which never arrived.)[

Echoes of Home

About ten minutes into this, a documentary about contemporary yodelling, I found myself trying to remember why I'd thought it would be a good idea to watch it - not in an 'oh my god this is terrible' way, but more in a bemused 'no really, what was I actually thinking' kind of vein...whether this was before, during, or after the yodellers wearing the creepy masks and model houses/villages on their heads, I'm not entirely sure.

Enjoyed it, anyway - it was a good way to kick off my Sunday, and I left smiling. Focused on three musicians, all Swiss and all pushing the envelope of yodelling in one way or another - a Stuart Murdoch type named Christian Zehmer (I think), Noldi, an older fellow who comes from a famous yodelling family (the Alders) but has, with his violin, struck out on a more experimental path (not entirely to the pleasure of his relatives, one gathers from the interviews with them), and a messily bohemian type whose name escapes me (a woman) - and plays the inherent quirkiness of its subject more or less with a straight bat.

(Preceded by a 30-minute short, Katoomba, about small town anomie, friendship, escape, and circumstances - pretty cliché, but pretty nice, too, highlighted by some spectacular scenery.)

(w/ Tamara)

Day Watch

Unexpectedly, lighter and more whimsical than Night Watch, but still satisfyingly explosive and hyper-dramatic. One or two of the set pieces come across as a bit forced or gratuitous - the car shearing along the curved outside of the hotel skyscraper, for example - but generally it hangs together well in an OTT kind of way, aided by its distinctive aesthetic and feel, and also by solidly charismatic performances all round. A long movie, but it doesn't feel it - and it even has an ending to warm the heart!

(w/ Marc, and his friend Kam, and her friend Rei [sp?], and also Rob)

Jasper Fforde - The Fourth Bear

Really sheer delight; maybe he's coasting a bit at this point but it's still such a pleasure that one simply can't mind. And now there's a new Thursday Next one to read!

John Keats - You Might As Well Live: The Life and Times of Dorothy Parker

Really conveys a sense of Mrs Parker's times and life - it's only a sense, of course, one person's and partial and inevitably coloured and all that jazz, but for all of that, it feels right and true, glittering and sharp-edged, fuzzy-edge, sepia and rose-hued and sad. Paints a picture of her as contradictory and partly but intensely and unbearably self-conscious - reading this book, I felt as if I knew her, and yet the very point is, of course, no one ever did.

previously

The Last Winter

Well, go on - would you expect a film whose MIFF synopsis could be distilled to "environmental horror: The Thing meets An Inconvenient Truth" to actually be frightening? And especially when said synopsis leads off with "Starring Ron Perlman as a gruff he-man" (said lead-off being, incidentally, the reason Michelle and I initially picked the film out as one to possibly watch)?

Well, I'm here to tell you that (a) 'environmental horror' is a perfect genre description for The Last Winter and (b) yes, it's pretty damn scary (also (c) Ron Perlman, as usual, does Ron Perlman to a 't'). 'Stressful' is the word that we latched onto afterwards while talking about the film's effect; 'intense' was equally apt...it has a slow burn unnervingness, and also its share of sudden shocks - Michelle and Vanessa were on either side of me, and both really jumped at several points throughout (not that I was entirely immune either...). Bleak and white and ultimately unhopeful - totally not a Sunday night film. A cautionary tale, and effective.

(w/ the aforementioned, plus Rob and Laura too, neither of whom had any idea what they were getting themselves into when they signed up on the night)

"Art for Science" @ Nellie Castan Gallery, 26 July 2007

A 'champagne preview' of works donated by Australian artists to raise money for the Murdoch Institute, where my dad works (which is how I heard about it). I'm not especially wired into the art scene so wasn't familiar with many of the artists, but recognised a Bill Henson straight off as I walked in. Others which caught my eye:

(Three photographs:)

* "Tuesday 28th March 2006 (Fremantle)" - Matthew Sleeth. Probably my favourite: a sports ground at night, nearly all dark, a thin row of middle distance house-lights across the central horizontal band - the horizon - of the photo, broken up by some tall standing trees, one bright overhead light blazing cryptically near the centre. It speaks to me - there's something strong and real to it.
* "Blue City, India" - Sonia Payes. Mysterious ruined-looking walled city, like some conquistador's hazy early-morning dream.
* "I Did It For You" - Jane Burton. A woman on all fours, in silhouette, seen from outside through a cross-framed window and delicate lace curtain - black and white, of course...it's striking.

(A couple of others:)

* "The Wall and the Bubbler's Shadow" - Jeff Martin. Just an oil painting, green park bench against red wall, all rough. But there's something very appealing about it, I don't really know what. A sort of heightened familiarity maybe; the barest hint of the uncanny.
* "Ever" - Angela Brennan. I wasn't actually mad about this one, though I liked it well enough. The main thing which struck me about it was how compositionally Rothko-esque the piece is; that said, it lacks (and possibly doesn't aspire towards) the vividity of MR's work - a common theme with the more non-representational pieces in this show, incidentally, when compared to their most obvious antecedents.