Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

I’ll make this short, considering the third graders that’ve read and reread this book probably have more compelling things to say. I confess, my mind was elsewhere. Where exactly, I’m not so sure, but only some of the time was it there in Hogwarts, with Harry and Ron and Hermione and and all their misadventures. I finished the first Harry Potter book long after it was first published, and now am finally allowed to order the movie on Netflix. I was a rare breed for never having read or seen any of these. Until now.

I loved the funny parts in the beginning, like when school letters pile in by the dozens, the dialect-heavy scenes with Hagrid, etc. But somewhere along the line the plot got harder for me to wrap my head around. I’ll go ahead and blame it on my inattentiveness (what kind of person, exactly, does this make me?). I’ve heard about grown men and women who play Quidditch, and I can’t say I’m there yet, although reading it was pretty fun. The general consensus I keep hearing is these books get better and better. Who knows, maybe soon I’ll be dying to get to the rest of ‘em. This was book #6, so all in all I think the first month saw some good progress. 

Everything Means Nothing To Me

A couple items of meaninglessness:

The worst title/idea/image to ever be found on a post related to copyediting is here.

Tao Lin’s recent charts, here and here, are equal parts absurd and profound. I want his novella, Shoplifting From American Apparel, to arrive sooner, but we’ll have to wait. And when it does, let’s hope I’m well toward the end of my maybe-a-bad-idea 2009 in Books project.

Some things in life are fought against until gradually taking over. This is the case with me and the new Animal Collective album, Merriweather Post Pavilion. As we speak I’m getting swallowed by the undertow. 

And while we’re on the topic of strange, indescribable music, Gil Mantera’s Party Dream is coming back to Bottletree soon.

You Start To Turn Into Yourself, You Only Get To Do It Once

Look at me look at me look at me..

Occasionally I’ll find myself wafting through old livejournal posts. I like to reminisce on what my life was like back then (if the online journal format is much of an indicator). A lot can change in a few years. To my surprise, I wasn’t as horrific a writer back in ‘04 as remembered. Maybe because I wasn’t really trying. Not great, but interesting enough. And in some ways, on a superficial level, I was kind of the same person. My overall take is that right now I’d still hang out with the me of four or five years ago, providing that he not talk too much, and that he not beat my ass in a game of darts or any other “sports” I might’ve been “into” at the time.

The non-capitalization/grammar-lacking aspects of the early blog bug me, though. Was I lazy? Trying to be hip and spontaneous? Don’t think I knew it would be cooler to say it was a nod to the Bauhaus artists.

A handful of posts I still like (and that aren’t too “deep”) include this one, this one and this one. This one could double as a Weekly Fizz post (if I actually listed what the root beer was called—was it a secret?). Brandon will like this one. And then I also nearly forgot all about this and this and this and this and this. 

Final thoughts: I kind of miss taking pictures. And does anybody remember whose birthday party these are from?:

Middle Cyclone

Robbie Crowley gave me a shout-out today, so I’ll return the favor by saying you should visit his great blog. As usual, you can always count on him to make the trip for a good concert. We bought tickets to see Neko Case on April 4th at Workplay, coming through on her fairly short Spring tour. I wonder if she’ll sign my wifebeater?

I was surprised when she (or someone in her “crew” or whatever) added me as a friend on imeem last week. I’ve been anticipating the new album, mainly ’cause it’s got a pretty wicked cover:

Something Else

Here’s a couple videos while I come down off my Kinks high:

X-Ray

I was so excited to begin my 2009 in books project that maybe I forgot to add an important rule. We’re keeping it sporadic, but we’ll also be reading primarily fiction, and probably NO decorating or cooking-related books.

That said, X-Ray is non-fiction, though the author takes liberties to alter what otherwise might be considered a straightforward rock memoir into something different. For those unaware, it’s a book by the legendary songwriter/lead singer of the Kinks. With much anticipation, I expected to start the year off reading this one, but it took too long to arrive. 

I always imagined Ray Davies to be the gentle, kindhearted type. Maybe because he’s always smiling while singing in the videos I’ve watched. But asshole Ray is just as charming. There were pages and pages about difficult feuds and unhappy marriages, which made me wonder, ‘Where Have All The Good Times Gone?’ He completely debunks the myths of the ’swinging sixties,’ and displays it to be a complete mess of an era. One of the big themes is the greed and corruption within the music industry, and how he was one of its first victims. A lot of the time the book is really funny, too, like when R.D. talks trash about bands, including a few comments about The Who copying his style. The infamous scene of Mick Avory nearly decapitating Dave Davies’ head with a cymbal is there, and one with Keith Richards being drunk and yelling up at brother Dave from the sidewalk. 

One of my favorite excerpts:

(John) Lennon walked up over to me and stared over at my guitar, on its stand next to my amplifier. He put his hand up to his cheek and looked over the instrument as if it were a rare antique. Without asking permission, he touched the tone control, while I looked on in astonishment. I suppose that I should have felt privileged to have one of the Beatles take the trouble to make a comment about us or our instruments, but in the circumstances I felt as though I had been violated.

‘Is this yours?’

‘Once my mum has paid off the hire-purchase.’ I thought that this working-class comment would impress him, but he was unmoved.

Then, as Lennon’s arm raised to brush a little bit of dandruff from the shoulder of my red hunting jacket, he paused to take a peep at the audience through the curtains.

‘Excuse me,’ I said nervously. ‘It’s our turn. You’re on after us.’

Lennon gave a stern look down his magnificent long nose, while his mouth broke into a broad grin. ‘With the Beatles, laddie, nobody gets a turn. You’re just there to keep the crowd occupied until we go on.’ As he left the stage he threw out a parting comment: ‘Well, lads, if you get stuck and run out of songs to play, we’ll lend you some of ours.’

I wanted to shout that we didn’t know any of theirs, but the lights had dimmed and the curtain had started to open. An imaginary bell sounded for round one. We were on.

I also enjoyed the stories about the sexy mod groupie chicks (or the less-young women, whom he calls “a nice bit of old”). I’d keep going but I’m running out of time before the season premiere of LOST begins. Plus, breaking rule #3 will mean I’ll turn into one of those annoying amazon.com reviewers. I dragged along while reading this one, because I was trying to take it all in, and was distracted by less important things like hanging out with actual people, and working on grad school app materials. I should also note this was actually book #5. #4 gets a placeholder, because it was done for a music-related review job to be in First Draft magazine sometime in the future (this might be cheating, but Randy Owen has so little in common with Ray Davies, that I think it passes as an exception to the rule).

Next we’ll be making the strange jump to start reading a way-too-famous book about wizards, a caged snowy owl, and a phoenix-feather wand.

Poachers

Two-thirds through Tom Franklin’s Poachers I had a wonderful feeling. I can totally do this! We’ve halfway into week two and about to begin book #4. Maybe a book every single week is a stretch, but at the moment 52 in a year seems like cake. At this rate, I can probably throw in some Dickens, maybe get further ahead racking up enough time to get lost in some Infinite Jest. Probably getting ahead of myself.

This one’s another from the slew of books that would always stand out to me from customers’ suggestions during the good old days at Jonathan Benton. The thing about working at a bookstore is you’re constantly reminded you can never catch up with all the books out there. If you’ve seen the cover of the paperback edition, perhaps you know that Josh and Garrett Kelly have the gator (crocodile?) tattoo’ed on themselves. Pretty serious. The Alabama author’s stories here are literary, so I tried taking my time. The lines flow so well. Many of the characters are capable of doing very bad things, yet still invoke empathy. A Google search led to an interesting but dated identity theory interview, where Mr. Franklin speaks about the the lower states, writing, being happy, etc.

I’d strongly recommended this one to dudes who were raised in the South. (I know you might be thinking Floridians are excluded, but I’ll have you know I did my share growing up of shooting guns, wading in creeks, not to mention camping in the woods monthly, and spending a few weeks a year in Raleigh, North Carolina getting woken up by my uncle at 4 am to do farm work.) I recommend it for dudes mainly because I don’t know too many girls that would enjoy seeing, for instance, a guy doing his brother a favor by taking the wife’s kittens out in the woods to shoot them, one by one. There’s much more to it than that, but if I keep going we break rule #3.

I’m feeling a bit non-social, so maybe I need to get out, remember what the sun looks like before starting the next one.

mental_floss

In case you didn’t already have enough reasons to pick up the current issue of mental_floss…

Cary Norton shot some photos for the Jan-Feb cover story, which answers the Biggest Questions of 2009. I was able to spend an entire day with him, one Winslow Taft, and a taste of John Yam for dessert. Passerbys looked confused, and a few even worried, which I suppose happens sometimes when a person is dressed in a spacesuit or holding a giant bomb, respectively.

These shots accompany the questions When Can I Travel to Space? and How Easy Is It to Get a Nuclear Weapon?

Watchmen

I’ve been dabbling in some trendy stuff. I figure the world is pretty big, so why fight it?

Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s popular graphic novel Watchmen can be found everywhere these days, mainly because the movie’s coming out soon, though I’ve heard there’s been some delays. I don’t read too many graphic novels. Maybe I should, since I dig some good artwork.

Of course the visual storytelling was superb, as were the big ideas. It was dark, but not in the ways I expected. It kept my attention enough for me to read it over the weekend, but truthfully, I’m not entirely sure I grasped all of what was going on. The 1980s political stuff might’ve stumped me. Also, tons of stories seemed to be tossed around at once, and I couldn’t figure out which was the most important to follow. Brandon said it’s one he had to read a few times, so perhaps that it the problem. It’s about these heroes who have all these deep psychological problems. None of them are entirely good or bad (though a few of them we figure out eventually are just plain bad). The book focuses more on their weaknesses than their strengths, which to my understanding was one of the aspects that made it so different back when first published. 

When I was a kid I couldn’t fall asleep without reading some sort of illustrated fiction, whether it be a comic book, or a collection of Calvin and Hobbes strips or whatever. And then I fell in love with music and convinced myself that I couldn’t relax unless my headphones were on. Anyway, part of the experience of reading stuff like this for me is that it takes me back to a particular time and place. Most likely, you can find me with all the nerds at the box office on opening weekend.

Just started book #3. It’s probably gonna take me a few days, but hopefully not too long. Reason being, I just got a call from the bookstore saying my copy of X-Ray is in.

Quotation Mark Abuse

It’s been a while, but just made a visit to the “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks.

It’s “timeless.”

I should start carrying my camera around.