A horror story.

Teacher said, “You don’t obey.
You fidget and twidget
And won’t sit down.
So go in the corner now
‘Til I say you can turn around.”
So there I stood ‘til it got dark
Without a whimper or a tear,
‘Til everybody else went home.
I guess that she forgot me here.
And that was Friday, so I stayed
All through the weekend—bein’ good,
And Monday was the first day of
Summer vacation, so I stood
Through hot July and sticky August,
Tryin’ to obey her rule.
Stood right there until September,
When—yikes—they closed down the school!
Boarded up the doors and windows,
Moved to a new one way ‘cross town.
So here I’ve stood for forty year
In dark and dust and creaky sounds,
Waiting for her to say, “Turn around.”

This might not be just what she meant,
But me—I’m so obedient.

—Shel Silverstein, ‘Obedient.’1996.

Music year 2009. The lists.

Cross-posted from me Fezbook. The disclaimers are here.

Albums I like:

1. Phoenix, ‘Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix.’
2. The Dirty Projectors, ‘Bitte Orca.’
3. The Very Best (Esau Mwamwaya and Radioclit), ‘The Very Best Mixtape.’
4. Klaus & Kinski, ‘Tu Hoguera Está Ardiendo.’
5. Micachu and the Shapes, ‘Jewellery.’
6. Kelly Clarkson, ‘All I Ever Wanted.’
7. The Mountain Goats, ‘The Life of the World to Come.’
8. Zeep, ‘Nina Miranda and Chris Franck Present Zeep.’
9. Amadou et Mariam, ‘Welcome to Mali.’
10. Leonard Cohen, ‘Live in London.’
11. Marit Larsen, ‘The Chase.’
12. Sugarfree, ‘Live! With the Manila Symphony Orchestra.’
13. Rodrigo y Gabriela, ‘11.11.’
14. Bituin Escalante, ‘Ur Luv Thang.’

Songs I like:

1. Phoenix, ‘1901.’
2. The Raveonettes, ‘Last Dance.’
3. Bon Iver, ‘re: Stacks.’
4. The Very Best (Esau Mwamwaya and Radioclit), ‘Boyz.’
5. Kelly Clarkson, ‘Don’t Let Me Stop You.’
6. Sondre Lerche, ‘Heartbeat Radio.’
7. Curumin, ‘Compacto.’
8. Camera Obscura, ‘French Navy.’
9. Klaus & Kinski, ‘El Cristo del Perdon.’
10. Iron and Wine, ‘The Trapeze Swinger.’
11. Grizzly Bear, ‘Two Weeks.’
12. St Vincent, ‘Actor out of Work.’
13. She and Him, ‘Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?’
14. Rye-Rye feat. M.I.A., ‘Bang.’
15. Aterciopelados, ‘28.’
16. Beyoncé, ‘Halo.’
17. The Dirty Projectors, ‘Temecula Sunrise.’
18. Micachu and the Shapes, ‘Golden Phone.’
19. Amadou et Mariam, ‘Sabali.’
20. Neko Case, ‘This Tornado Loves You.’
21. The Mountain Goats, ‘Romans 10:9.’
22. Amerie, ‘Tell Me You Love Me.’
23. Lily Allen, ‘The Fear.’
24. Solange Knowles, ‘Stillness Is on the Move.’
25. Thom Yorke, ‘All for the Best.’

I’ll maybe post a downloadable zip file somewhere. If I feel like it.

Music year 2009: A few notes.

Soon to be posted—for real—are some of the newish things I enjoyed listening to this year. Stay tuned.

• Not all of them are from 2009—a few from 2008, one from 2007.
• There are two lists—one for albums, another for songs (not necessarily singles).
• The lists are more or less in descending order.
• I wish I could include Glover Gill’s fantastic original score for Richard Linklater’s ‘Waking Life,’ but it came out in 2001.
• Then again, if I could include any album from any year, the Beatles will never be knocked down from the top spot. Or maybe only by Bach.
• I almost kicked Iron and Wine’s ‘Trapeze Swinger’ off the list for using ‘seldomly.’ As much as I love you and your music, Mr Beam, in my book ‘seldomly’ is as bad as ‘farly’ and ‘longly.’
• Despite its ridiculous title, Bituin Escalante’s ‘Ur Luv Thang’ is pretty good.
• It sucks that I’m not the only or the first guy to think Ebe Dancel looks like Efren Bata Reyes.
• When I’m an old man, I wanna be Leonard Cohen.
• I vehemently refused to listen to Lady Gaga’s ‘The Fame’ until this morning. Turns out it’s not bad at all: several good hooks, cute electro effects, many songs that could benefit from being ~3:15 long instead of 3:59 or 4:25. What’s really surprising is that it’s so inoffensive and normal. Britney’s ‘Blackout’ is far superior, or the stuff the Swedes produce even in their sleep.
• If you think you’re too cool for Kelly Clarkson, you should try getting over yourself sometime.
• Don’t ask me how much money I spend on music.

Stuck on you.

Oh, hello there.

You're actually sticking around in this dump?

Wow.

Don’t dance at the top of the house: Summer mix 2009.

Since 2006, this blog—whose only reason for still existing is that I haven’t quite decided whether to delete it or not—has featured ‘official’ mix tapes every summer. (See the track lists for 2006 and 2007.) I kinda didn’t do it last year because I was trying to have a life that didn’t need to be written about and posted online. Not that I’m deluding myself into thinking anybody missed the summer play lists, or missed witnessing me embarrass myself in this here blog. Anyway.

I know it’s kinda trite to depend so much on Brazilian music when making a summer mix, but it works well for me. (The mix tape’s opening track, from Japanese-Brazilian Curumin, is totally beachy, even if I don’t understand what he’s singing about.) And then of course there’s my usual tactic: the musical version of going on a world tour. There’s stuff from France, Mexico, Scotland, Cuba, Sweden, England, and Spain. And there’s just one track from the US—from New Orleans’s Hot 8 Brass Band—a fact I feel vaguely smug about. Even the fact that I’m using that song as the final track is vaguely smug-making too.

Anyway. Following is the track list; you can download the zip file here. Enjoy.

1. ‘Compacto,’ Curumin. (Japan Pop Show, 2008.)
2. ‘Lalala,’ Nouvelle Vague feat. Julie Delpy. (Two Days in Paris OST, 2007.)
3. ‘Sufoco,’ Alcione. (O Samba: Brasil Classics vol. 2, 1990.)
4. ‘1901,’ Phoenix. (Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, 2009.)
5. ‘Azul,’ Natalia Lafourcade. (Hu Hu Hu, 2009.)
6. ‘French Navy,’ Camera Obscura. (My Maudlin Career, 2009.)
7. ‘En Casa del Trompo, No Bailes,’ Orquestra Riverside. (Sí, Para Usted: The Funky Beats of Revolutionary Cuba, vol. 1, 2007.)
8. ‘Dance, Dance, Dance,’ Lykke Li. (Youth Novels, 2008.)
9. ‘Olerê Camará,’ Alcione. (O Samba: Brasil Classics vol. 2, 1990.)
10. ‘Introducing Mr Furia And Professor Manso,’ The Pinker Tones. (BCN Connection, 2003.)
11. ‘Smokebelch II,’ Sabres Of Paradise. (Sabresonic, 1993.)
12. ‘Te Queria,’ Seu Jorge. (Samba Esporte Fino, 2001.)
13. ‘Su Recuerdo,’ Single. (Pío Pío, 2006.)
14. ‘Sexual Healing,’ Hot 8 Brass Band. (Rock with the Hot 8, 2007.)

Mere Christianity.

In man there is an inextinguishable yearning for the infinite. None of the answers attempted are sufficient. Only the God himself who became finite in order to open our finiteness and lead us to the breadth of his infiniteness responds to the question of our being. For this reason, the Christian faith finds man today too. Our task is to serve the faith with a humble spirit and the whole strength of our heart and understanding.

--Joseph Cardinal Ratizinger, speaking in Guadalajara, Mexico, May, 1996.

Two years of reading.

Been an awesomely busy year, and because of the overall busyness I haven’t gotten much reading done. Well, that isn’t entirely accurate: I’ve been reading—books, articles, stuff online, recipe instructions, the fine print of several dozen contracts, archival stuff, stuff I have to line-edit for work, street signs, et cet.—but I haven’t finished too many books this year.

But I’ve read a few really good ones. Here they are.

The favorite: ‘The Gastronomical Me,’ M. F. K. Fisher.

The others:
‘A Death In The Family,’ James Agee.
‘Gilead,’ Marilynne Robinson.
‘Innocence,’ Penelope Fitzgerald.
‘Austerlitz,’ W. G. Sebald.
‘Twenty-Eight Artists And Two Saints,’ Joan Acocella.
‘Three Gospels,’ Reynolds Price.

Also: I don’t care if you don’t care, but I’m also posting a list of the books I liked in 2007.

The favorite: ‘The Sign Of Jonas,’ Thomas Merton.

The others:
‘The Savage Detectives,’ Roberto Bolaño
‘Lions, Harts, Leaping Does, And Other Stories.’ J. F. Powers.
‘Housekeeping,’ Marilynne Robinson.
‘Pig Perfect,’ Peter Kaminsky.
‘The Periodic Table,’ Primo Levi.
‘A Tomb For Boris Davidovich,’ Danilo Kiš.
‘Varieties Of Disturbance,’ Lydia Davis.
‘The Man Who Ate Everything,’ Jeffrey Steingarten.
‘The Lover,’ Marguerite Duras.
‘Veronica,’ Mary Gaitskill.
‘Divisadero,’ Michael Ondaatje.
‘The Arrival,’ Shaun Tan.

A celebration.

Music by Satie, 'Gymnopedie no. 1'

Six months of a marriage, finally made legal and binding and qualified for tax-related micro-benefits. Her first birthday as a wife, with specific God-sanctioned pareunial privileges. It is November 19, and we are at home—actually half a home, which we share on weekday mornings with people working with the urban poor and which we share on certain evenings with Mangyans in transit—where we expect to spend the next couple of years before we move in to a much smaller space that currently exists only as scheduled deductions on our checking account. In the fridge cools a bottle of a complicated grape-based beverage, which is prepared to let loose an army of bubbles as soon as the cap is popped. There is risotto on the stove, demanding to be stirred. Each grain of rice is taunted into obesity and softness by fire and the incremental addition of a broth engineered to plagiarize the flavor of a blue cheese; Gorgonzola, maybe, or Roquefort, something that, joyfully, can trick our palates into perceiving as the real thing. The oven has also been preheated, while I try to do my best impression of a KitchenAid mixer, harassing butter and sugar and flour and vanilla and eggs and chocolate into forming a hopefully tasty mixture, something that I’m almost sure will compare unfavorably, once tasted, with the Platonic ideal of a chocolate lava cake. Castrated for our enjoyment are several tulips, whose scandalously pretty reproductive organs are now making a slow descent to flaccidity and death and decay in a water-filled vase on the table. Under the table is a beautiful aging dog, the de facto daughter, obsessively licking the air around her face or hiding from the threat of medication, which she is scheduled to receive in a few minutes. It is a night that is vastly different from the night my wife made for me, in celebration of my first birthday as a husband, a grand feast involving the hacked corpse of a lamb, homemade yogurt (which is nothing but milk made cozy for the survival and reproduction of certain forms of microorganisms, if you think about it, except the mixture has made a wise leap to deliciousness), homemade paneer (another species of milk-based food), and chocolate–peanut-butter cheesecake. It is also not readily mistakable with the night when all we had for dinner were leftovers, and, to allay feelings of poverty and deprivation, we dressed up before we sat at the table, she in a dress and heels, I in a long-sleeved shirt and tie. But tonight is also like these nights: all these nights have us trading words and smiles and touches, all those things that we were paralyzed from giving for so long, in fear of appearing mortally sappy or irony-deficient. These are nights when we affirm that succumbing to sentimentality and squareness is not a problem at all; the inability or refusal to risk sentimentality so that what is genuinely felt and known can be expressed nakedly is the problem.

Now out of the oven, the cakes provide sufficient proof to my failure as a baker; what should’ve approximated the consistency of molten volcanic material look more like Pompeii several decades after the eruption of Vesuvius. I make my apologies, but she waves them off. For her, rescuing cakes are not nearly on the same level of difficulty as mitigating droughts and famines and financial crises. I will turn the cakes into a kind of chocolate–coffee trifle, she says casually. I say thank you, meaning it, meaning it very deeply.

Token post.

I’ve been meaning to post stuff here. Really. But I’ve been lazy, although I’m probably going to post my year-end lists soon. (A reminder: I’ve made too many promises here that I haven’t fulfilled, haven’t I?)

So if the reader I’m addressing in this post (and to whom I’m apologizing profusely) actually exists, here’s a token post: a meme!

1. Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
2. Turn to page 56.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post that sentence along with these instructions to your blog.
5. Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

Here it is:

Sin embargo … tales consideraciones y clasificaciones, no resultan en exceso apropiadas para dar cuenta de lo que sucedió en España entre 1940 y 1958.

— from ‘El grupo de Cuenca,’ published 1997 by the Fundación Caja de Madrid. The book is about the works of the members of the Cuenca group (Gerardo Rueda, Gustavo Torner, and Fernando Zóbel, as well as José Guerrero, Antonio Lorenzo, Manuel Mompó, and Eusebio Sempere). Their works form the core of the collection of the Museo de Arte Abstracto Español in Cuenca, Spain.

Canine pose-striking.

Kitty Roldan-de Guzman, subjected to an instant photo session using Photo Booth by her fawning parents, inexplicably tilting her head to one side when the beeping starts. Pop quiz: Why?

1. She just loves to turn tricks for photo equipment (i.e., the ‘using more words when one would do’ version of that strangely outdated infinitive, ‘to camwhore’).
2. The cervical-vertebral/cranial axial tilt is a transient neurological reaction to certain combined aural and visual stimuli, in this case the green pinlight coming from iSight and the soft beeping sounds.
3. She damn well knows she’s pretty, and whatever ridiculous thing she does is pretty too.