i hate having to defend mediocre movies from off-base criticisms, but here i am again. several months ago i expressed some of the reasons why i think new yorker film critic david denby is a really miserable cultural critic.

now i will make a similar argument regarding george saunders based on his recent contribution to the new yorker (let me know when this link changes). after reading this article, two things are immediatle apparent: (1) it's not at all funny and (2) saunders appears to be extremely offended by the new borat movie.

aside:
i thought the movie was ok... nothing new or surprising if you've seen a few episodes of da ali g show. actually, what makes the tv show work better (from my perspective) is that it is split between cohen's three uniquely funny characters.

it's hard for me to understand how this movie could be at all offensive to someone with saunders' credentials and faux-humanitarian sympathies. what i get from the new yorker article: saunders doesn't like it that cohen made fun of eastern european chauvanism, insanity in the name of god, and middle-class white americans; instead he thinks that blacks and gays would have been better targets. (although he appears to share borat's pam anderson fetish.) wtf? this is really new yorker quality writing?

i could write about why i think it's much funnier to harass politically and socially dominant groups rather than using 'racial slurs' to offend ethnic groups that have been oppressed for centuries (as suggested by saunders), but i will try to get my point across by proposing that saunders would truly enjoy the comedic stylings of michael richards (account needed)...?

that i find villalobos's epic ~40min track "fizheuer zieheuer" the least proggy and "out there" thing he's done in some time. it may be the first thing he's released since serpentin that didn't make me wish there was more 808 the bassqueen ooomph in it.

it's snowing outside right now (three straight days in seattle, who'd'a thunk?) and set to that background it actually sounds rather cheerful and happy and almost (almost) wholesome, which is never an adjective i thought i'd see near a villalobos track. i mean it still sounds a bit fucked-up, but relatively speaking it's not too far off.

• ricardo villalobos – fizheuer zieheuer


• ricardo villalobos – fizheuer zieheuer pt2

oh and ps, it's really fucking good. those horns sound like the most epicly charged thing ever, like staight out of the king of elfland's daughter.

a post... some of it is music related.

movies:
watched the fountain. not the sci-fi epic you might expect after watching the trailer.... but a decent movie about someone coming to terms with death. impressive sound track.

watched strozsek... now it's one of my favorite movies ever.

also highly recommending hard candy and kung fu hustle at the moment.

photography:
where i'm from. (audio)

music:
just got back from a trip to texas (see above). if i can ever get justin to send me mp3s of his latest remixes, i will post them here, and we will see if you like them as much as me.

like a boss (chopped, screwed)... andy got it stuck in my head. also really enjoyed listening to his ennio morricone album... if you're reading: was that a comp? if so, which one?

that my favorite track of the year is only my favorite track because i'm too dumb to read the labels on the 12" correctly: the al usher remix of señor coconut and his orchestra's cover of "behind the mask" is supposed to be played at 45rpm, unlike the a-side, which is clearly labeled 33rpm, and which lead me to think that the b-side was to be listened to similarly.

the villalobos remixed a-side is really really good, almost lives up to the constant hype, etc, but the al usher mix, wow. well, not so much when it's played too fast for it's own good (ie the speed at which it's nominally supposed to be played), but slowed down, pitched down, and able to breath? easily the prettiest, most confidently spacious and unfolding track i've heard in a long time.

• señor coconut and his orchestra – behind the mask (al usher remix) (slo-mo version)

in 1987, in the fist issue of why music sucks, frank kogan wrote

why does music suck?

an "answer"—one that raises more questions than it answers: music is reduced to symbols—the symbol almost replaces the music—the symbol gets in the way of the music—certain effects of the music are reduced to symbols: e.g., a type of music symbolizes rebellion rather than provoking rebellion, symbolizes outrageousness rather than being an outrage, symbolizes fun, symbolizes intelligence, symbolizes protest... the result is music that is meaningless—the term "meaningless" being used in the sense of "does not matter" and "has no effect". the music sounds empty. (and music of the past gets emptied in its present contexts.)

i refuse to palm off all the blame for the present suckiness on capitalism, commercialism, the exchange of commodities, corporate oligopolies, society, mainstream culture, etc. (analysis of these things and their relation to music—rather than scapegoating them—would be useful: talking about our place within culture, rather than referring to culture as "them".)

WE are doing something to kill music.

by "we" i don't automatically mean myself or the person reading this. i don't exclude us either.

...

what i mean is BLANDNESS. what i mean is TEPIDNESS. what i mean is boredom. what i mean is the dead kennedys and lydia lunch. we take people like jerry lee lewis and schooly d and through the process of our appreciating them turn them into nothing... [emph. mine]

i read that yesterday in real punks don't wear black and it knocked me on my ass. it completely crystalized how i've been feeling about music blogs lately, and music writing in general for them most part. it made me think about who out there can write about music without killing it. a short list indeed. it drove me to pose the question to myself: how can i write about music without killing it? can i? do i even want to try?

anyway, sorry to start off the new life of this blog on such a pessimistic note. lasercave has such great potential, but as with all things blog, i am afraid of the analogous phenomena happening: blog as signifier for experience, rather than experience itself.

i want this place to be vibrant, full of ideas and thought, rather than a placeholder for the same. i want this place to BE culture, rather than a place to pbs-ify and kill culture, like so many other blogs (boingboing, kottke, etc).

so, other lasercavers: make this place as wonderful as i know you can.

check out the inaugural edition of the lasercave podcast series: thick mix, by the unfortunately named but incredibly talented dj bowlpack b. the hotness.

listening to music this saturday. ten hours of mass transit bussing to and from olympia left me with little to do other than hit the ipod really hard.

rainy urban landscapes + me being really tired = basic channel sounding really awesome.

• phylyps – phylyps trak

same + me being really pissed at missing a bus and having to wait around a freeway park-and-ride for three hours for the next one = underground resistance sounding really really good.

• underground resistance – assault

listened to the dinosaur l lp and the tommy boy perfect beats comps on the way home. so good.

• exodus – together forever


• shannon – give me tonight