yukihime.com is shut down effective immediately.

Blogging and discussion continues at goviolet.com.

See you there!

I’m going to muck around with the blog backend for the first time in over two years. Apologies if things go whoops.

Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste by Carl Wilson

Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?

I am an elitist.

Most people are, insomuch as they believe some things are better than others. Everyone thinks that they have good taste–but is there any way to know for sure? The popular modern thing is to try and prove it with math, leading to the rise of aggregate filters like Game Rankings and Rotten Tomatoes. But without a proof for the fundamental taste axioms that underlie these percentages, there’s no way to know that the math is sound. What if we’re all wrong?

What if Céline Dion actually makes great music?

Such is the thesis statement of Carl Wilson’s contribution to 33 1/3, a series of book-length essays about great and timeless albums…and “Let’s Talk About Love.” Sure, just thinking of Céline gives most music fans a case of the howling fantods. But could ten million people really be so completely wrong? Surely there must be something of merit in her overproduced, saccharine pop…right?

What begins as a tongue-in-cheek effort for Wilson to stretch the limits of his personal taste–to “train” himself to enjoy, or at least understand the merits of, music completely outside his baliwick–soon turns into a serious and heartfelt mediation on the nature taste. Why do we have taste? Who decides what’s “good” and “bad” taste? What are the social, political, and class implications of taste? Is taste really as personal as we think it is, or is it something affected for the sake of others? Does the nature of criticism subconsciously exclude certain works of merit? Why do we take taste so goddamned personally?

Wilson points out that the modern aesthete isn’t “highbrow” but “no-brow,” a cultural omnivore as comfortable at a monster truck rally as a Puccini opera. This redefinition is a result of globalization and multiculturalism; the “omnivore” demonstrates cultural adaptability and open-mindedness. The cultural world of today isn’t “flat”–it’s infinitely bumpy. But in a world where even ABBA and the Monkees can be “reclaimed,” what’s the point of “taste” at all?

In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera writes that kitsch is “the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and the figurative sense of the word; kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence.” But in much of modern, critically certified art, what happens is a denial of nonshit, of everything that is acceptable in human existence… Should we make it a point never to have a nice thought without a nasty one as well?

Wilson eventually finds some kind and generous things to say about Céline’s music–not begrudgingly, or sarcastically, or post-modernly, or winkingly. But honestly and fairly. And what probably began for the reader as a journey into kitsch ends up in a more uncomfortable place. We are forced to admit that there may be more to life than being right about music and movies. But on the other side of the abyss lies redemption; a world where multiple, equally valid “taste spheres” can coexist and even support each other; where the maniacal country fan, the Pitchfork-worshipping indie kid, and the Céline-loving housewife can find, if not mutual understanding, at least mutual respect. Other people love something as much as you hate it–instead of telling them they’re wrong, why not find out why!

It turns out that the “End of Taste” in the title is not the comical edge of the abyss; instead, it’s the tabula rasa of no expectations, no definitions. If you are at all interested in matters of taste or criticism, this book is an absolute must read. If you write reviews for a living and don’t read this book, your reviews will be poorer for it. This book is hilarious, eye-opening, touching, and informative. It will teach you that you might be wrong…and that’s not the end of the world.

We only laugh at those with whom we feel an affinity that we must repudiate, but the feeling of at-oneness has already happened… What mockery reveals, in other words, is the emotional terror of democracy. That what is always being ridiculed is our wish to be together, our secret affinity for each other.

Go, now, before the Syndicate takes them down. You have maybe 48 hours.

Lasagna Cat: A Tribute to Jim Davis

I don’t regularly read Pitchfork Media. They’re a bit twee and spiteful and at their reviews are about three levels abstracted from any actual music. The Onion’s “Pitchfork Gives Music 6.8″ outlines their faults better than I could.

That said, their year-end reviews are pretty useful. Locking a bunch of petty, opinionated journos in a room and forcing them to hash out some kind of mutual agreement will usually result in an aggregate, if unconscious, approximation of good taste. Pitchfork’s Top 100 Tracks of 2007 contains several gems–buried under a pile of janky hip hop and lousy noise rock. (Though calling Deerhoof “noise” seems like giving them too much credit.) Grinding achievements in Blue Dragon over the Christmas break gave me the, uh, unique opportunity to listen to the full 8 hours of 100 tracks. Twice.¹ I then gave the list two more skip-heavy playthroughs, and now present my distilled wisdom as the Actual Top 12 Tracks of 2007. In no particular order.

These Guys Are Onto Something
2080, Yeasayer, #49
Archangel, Burial, #17
23, Blonde Redhead, #37

These tracks grabbed my attention with the subtlety of a lead pipe to the skull, demanding I learn more about the bands, their members, their albums, and especially their tour dates.

I might not have heard it until the last week of December, but “2080″ is still the best track I heard last year. TV on the Radio by way of Peter Gabriel and Talking Heads, Yeasayer writes songs with a religious, post-apocalyptic fervor. They sound like all tomorrow’s hopes and fears at once. They are special. “Archangel” is the sound of a 3 AM rave from the parking lot, or perhaps as far away as the floor of the pool next door. It crystalizes the beauty of urban alienation. “23″ is epic shoegaze synthpop dreamland spun by an adorable Japanese songstress. Which reminds me–nothing in 2007 was better than Asobi Seksu’s Citrus.

When It Pops, It Pops
Umbrella, Rihanna feat. Jay-Z, #5
Is It You?, Cassie, #70
Heartbroken, T2 feat. Jodie Aysha, #47

I’m about as big a foodie as they come, but you know what? Man cannot live on haute cuisine alone. Sometimes, nothing will do but a hamburger.

When I first heard “Umbrella” last spring, 6 weeks before it hit radio, my first and immediate thought was, “this is so Pitchfork’s track of the year.” #5 isn’t too far off, and it’s the top pop track, so I’m claiming partial credit for my prognostication. “Is It You?” is a perfect pop ditty, a song that proves there’s always room for crunked out bass, C-F-G chords, and killer choruses. “Heartbroken” hit #1 on the U.K. charts, so maybe those chavs aren’t all bad. They used to make fun of me for listening to videogame music; now, videogames are orchestral Redbook or licensed tracks, and it’s the chart-toppers rocking the SPC700. The geeks shall inherit the earth.

Beats, Loops, and Rock and Roll
None Shall Pass, Aesop Rock, #57
All My Friends, LCD Soundsystem, #1
Wham City, Dan Deacon, #30

Electronica, hip-hop, trance–same difference. These songs that take one great idea and sharpen it to a razor edge.

“None Shall Pass” is anthemic, driving hip-hop, with a minor-key synth hook and bridge vocals distorted beyond human recognition. “All My Friends” is reminiscent of “(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan”; an off-kilter melodic line that slowly builds and unfurls into a driving fountain of energy. “Wham City” is the Ys of electronic music; a 12-minute operatic opus that channels 70s children’s television anthems, dirty feedback, and unfiltered joy into a whirling kaleidoscope of fun, fun, fun!

The Spanish Call It “Independiente”
Time to Pretend, MGMT, #94
You! Me! Dancing!, Los Campesinos!, #41
Mistaken for Strangers, The National, #77

Just because you’re “indie” doesn’t mean you’re avant garde. Guitar, bass, drums, synthesizers and nasal vocals still have a lot of life left in ‘em.

“Time to Pretend” is a languid look at the rock star life; the band is practically drowning in their newfound, possibly imagined fame. “You! Me! Dancing!” is pretty much damn eponymous. “Mistaken for Strangers” could be the exit theme to American Psycho, a Joy Division-fueled, drowning nightmare of corporate facelessness.

And there you go: the best of the best.

^{1. Melting my 360 in the process. Praise be the Best Buy Extended Product Warranty!}

Knytt Stories by Nifflas

I played through 2007 indie darling Knytt Stories. It’s less than two hours long, it’s free, and it’s a quiet sort of genius. You should play it for yourself.

The game plays like a stripped-down Symphony of the Night; you begin the game able to run and jump; eventually, you will wall-climb, double-jump, and float. Previously inaccessible areas become accessible, etcetera, etcetera. Trying to describe the game’s success bring s me to two disparate gaming touchstones: Shadow of the Colossus and The Guardian Legend.

The Colossus connection is easy to explain. The 2D-pixel art and character micro-sprite give the game an immense scale; the huge and varied game world only further dwarfs the player. Your character is a tiny interloper in a world vastly beyond their ken, and there are surpises and secrets around every corner. Shrinking the character increases the relative size of the game world–and thus, perhaps counterintuitively, the subjective game experience.

The Guardian Legend connection is a bit more difficult to explain. I replayed Compile’s adventure/shooter masterpiece last December, and it was still as wonderful as when I was 10; moreso, even, as I can now appreciate the brilliance of its balance and design. One of the things I appreciated most was its complete lack of “dead” or “downtime”; your character moved quickly and decisively, and each “screen” of the labyrinth could be navigated in a matter of seconds. Each screen offered enough challenge to engage and entertain, but never so much as to slow down the game’s momentum.

Knytt Stories is fast as well, but it’s also smart; each of its brief stationary screens serves as a short phrase in the overall story, like a panel in a comic strip. Some offer traditional platforming challenges. Some offer no challenges at all. Some establish a history for the screen with the use of an abandoned object or silent character. Some are empty space with nothing but a tiny corner to traverse, a silent beat between two more “vocal” areas.

The game is paced; not in the abstract sense of a traditional, scrolling platformer, but in the tight, exact sense of an obsessively edited film. It suggests a new, alternative language for the player experience; instead of the continuous Ride, we have the Museum, a string of crafted, still, separate moments that, together, make something more.

I watched four movies this weekend.

Sweeney Todd by Tim Burton

I went into this completely unfamiliar with the source material; in fact, I’ve somewhat embarassingly never listened to a Sondheim musical. I was impressed, musically; the phrasing and countermelodies were way above something like Phantom or Les Mis. The movie was restrained, for Burton; he devoted himself to the source material completely, and managed to cut away all his wacky tics. Johnny Depp was astounding, but when is he not? Delivering a performance by turns manic and restrained. I even liked Sacha Baron Cohen–a phrase I never thought I’d write. The film relishes in its ultraviolence, which makes its tragic denoument all the more affecting; like Sweeney, we have come to believe in the pure righteousness of his revenge, thanks to the exhilarating cinematography and score. When it turns out that killing people might have been wrong, we’re as surprised as he.

Angel-A by Luc Besson

A charming, wonderful film completely unreleased to American theaters. This film is It’s a Wonderful Life set the beautiful, monochromatic Paris of the witching hour. With a leggy 6-foot Danish supermodel playing the part of the “angel.” It’s as gloriously ridiculous as it sounds. The insanely exuberant Angela helps the shrinking André regain his sense of purpose and self-worth; meanwhile, Paris is more beautiful than it’s ever been. A single shot in the middle of the movie is one of the most distinctive I’ve ever seen; Angela forces André to confront himself in a bathroom mirror; to stare into his eyes and tell himself the truth. During his gut-wrenching confession, the camera slowly pans 180 degrees around him, passing impossibly through the wall until it rests behind the reflection we just saw, facing André who is facing himself. We, the audience, have become the mirror; and what André says to himself, we are made to say back to him. This is a movie it’s impossible not to love.

Hula Girls by Sang-il Lee

Hula Girls was critically acclaimed upon release in Japan and nominated for a total of 12 awards at the 2007 Japan Academy Awards, going on to win five major awards, including that of best film, best director, best screenplay, best supporting actress (for Yū Aoi), and most popular film.

Unfortunately, this speaks more to the quality of Japanese cinema than the merits of the film itself. Dateline: It’s 1965, a northern coal town is dying, and a quixotic “Hawaii Center” is the city’s plan to attract tourists and remain solvent. But you can’t have a tropical paradise without hula girls, so a professional dancer is brought in from Tokyo to train the miners’ daughters. Hijinx Ensue^TM. There are culture clashes between the miners and the dancers, setbacks, gawkish girls yearning to be beautiful, and about seven separate maudlin tearjerking moments, spaced evenly throughout the film. Spoiler: in the end, hula dancing saves the day! File under “mostly harmless.”

The Aviator by Martin Scorsese

Now! On glorious Blu-ray! A film of wonderful visuals, fantastic flights, and spot-on historical performances, especially from Leo as Hughes and Cate Blanchett as Katherine Hepburn. I didn’t really gather any overarching themes, other than “sometimes, you gotta be a little crazy to be a lot genius,” but it was still a great historical overview of a person I knew very little about, except in caricature. I suppose that biographies are exempt from the narrative expectations of the novel; so, too, can a successful biopic “just” be a series of illuminating character moments. Right?

I resolved, this New Year, to post more in this blog. “At all” would be a good start. I figured a good place to start would be to document the year in media; to write something, anything, about every book I read, movie I see, or game I finish. We’ll see how long this lasts. 7 days, so far.

I Killed Adolf Hitler by Jason

A story about an assassin who travels back in time to kill Adolf Hitler and botches things rather badly. Hitler steals the time machine and zaps himself back to the present, leaving our stranded assassin to return to the present the long way around. It sounds like a dark comedy, and it is, but it has a secret dramatic intent, and by the end of its slim 48-pages, has shown itself to not be about time travel or Hitler at all, but rather the daily decisions we make about how to live our lives. This is the first work I’ve read by Jason, and I was rather surprised by how emotionally affecting it was. His simple animal characters act like characters in an Ibsen play, their shallow dialogues revealing deep, well-timed emotional truths they themselves may not be aware of.

Why Are You Doing This? by Jason

I liked I Killed Adolf Hitler so much I ran out and immediately bought another of Jason’s books. This one is a noirish “wrong man” mystery, about an innocent at the wrong place at the wrong time, and the web of mystery and murder that follows. It also asks what makes for a life well-lived: the stories that you can share with others? Or the stories that others can tell about you? Like the other book, this one packs an emotional wallop into its final pages.

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

The new gold standard in autobiographical memoir comics, though for my money, Craig Thompson’s Blankets still can’t be beat. I chalk up my preferences to the simple fact that I have lots of experience with being a confused lovelorn teenager, and very little being a confused lovelorn lesbian with a closeted father. It’s good, and the portrait it paints of a messed up family and the fun(eral) home that keeps them together is fascinating, but the whole thing left me feeling a little estranged. What I love about Blankets is the messy rush of emotion running through every line on every page; the feeling that Craig Thompson had to put his pen to paper or he would die. Bechdel’s work, in contrast, is intelligent, erudite, and full of razor-honed observations. In the end, the work felt as distancing as the baroque ornamentation in her father’s OCD-fueled mansion. honed to a razor edge. Excellent art, but lacking in heart.

The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck by Don Rosa

Did you like Duck Tales as a child? Of course you did, because you are a reader of impeccable taste. Don Rosa writes stories about Scrooge McDuck that will make you feel like you’re a kid again; more precisely, like an adult who feels like a kid again. His stories are full of adventure and globe-trotting, but also well-researched historically and completely faithful to Carl Barks’ original 1960s stories. A book that manages to be light without also being slight, and that does an amazingly entertaining job of explaining just exactly how Scrooge became the richest duck in the world. Answer: by being awesome.

May it be better than 2007.

Thought to start the year:

“The future is no more uncertain than the present.”
- Walt Whitman

A lot of terrible sci-fi stories carry the conceit that there’s music encoded within our DNA, or a message from God hidden deep inside the digits of pi, or a beautiful rosary hiding somewhere up in n-dimensional space. I always dismissed those stories as so much poppycock; now, I’m not so sure.

There is, apparently, a carbonated soda in the UK called Tango. It may or may not be delicious. It is, however, definitely marketed by insane people.

How else to explain this impossibly composited 1996 advert, where England threatens to take on France–Europe–the world! over a perceived slight against Tango’s fresh new flavor. An explosively fruity take on Jose Gonzales’ “Heartbeats.” A series of commercials combining my favorite episode of the 80’s Twilight Zone with, uh, physical abuse. Commercials about rocket-powered oranges and 6.4, woof! Ads for Diet Tango, a drink that threatens, “YOU NEED IT BECAUSE YOU’RE WEAK.” Killer whales playing baby seal volleyball.

As a person whose t-shirt wardrobe is primarily designed to confuse others, I respect this level of wanton disregard for your audience.

I had an angry blog post here that I quickly thought better of and deleted. In its place, let us watch Colin’s Dancing Bear. Dance, bear, dance!

Passage is an oddly compelling game-type thing. It’s certainly the best game I’ve ever played that’s only 12 pixels tall. It only takes 5 minutes to play. Recommended.

The Speed Racer trailer uses every color of the rainbow in every single frame–as well as the seven forbidden colors of the chthonian anti-rainbow. It is a coded message designed to tripwire forgotten assasination programming. Instead of copying anime, the movie recreates the dream of anime. It’s like somebody vomited Fruit Loops into the Matrix, only the Matrix was a flying car, with a monkey mechanic.

This will be either the stupidest movie ever made, or a work of mad and revelatory genius that mankind won’t fully comprehend until 2087.

When you think of the science fiction of the 1950s, you probably think of the great genre grandmasters: Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein. But there was another author writing during this time period whose works are undergoing a recent rediscovery–Cordwainer Smith. Smith wasn’t a prolific author; he only wrote about two dozen short stories and a single novel over the course of a decade. But his works have a unique quality and lasting resonance that distinguishes them from anyone writing then–or, for that matter, today.

Almost all of Smith’s stories are set in a shared universe known as the Instrumentality of Mankind. Despite the stories being set in a “shared” universe, most are set hundreds, if not thousands of years apart; the entire cycle spans tens of thousands of years. The Instrumentality is a semi-governing body responsible for guiding mankind’s evolution and preserving his, well, humanity, in the face of this transgenic, intergalactic, post-post-modern future.

One of the Instrumentality’s major initiatives is the Rediscovery of Mankind, a sociological/archeological program that unearths and reimplements ancient cultures and languages to fight the stagnating effects of a post-scarcity economy–the “nightmare of perfection.” Smith grew up overseas and was stationed in Asia for several years during his time in the military; it’s possible that this international background is part of what gives his works an unusual cultural awareness for the normally white bread 1950s.

The stories are packed with feverish detail, and no two stories share the same insanities. “Scanners Live in Vain,” perhaps his most famous story, tells of the first interstellar pilots, men who have surgically removed their emotions and feelings to survive the crushing madness that lies between the stars. “The Game of Rat and Dragon” tells of starships co-piloted by genetically engineered cats, the only creatures with the reflexes to defend against the unknowable creatures inhabiting the higher dimensions of hyperspace. “The Dead Lady of Clown Town” describes the failed revolution of D’joan, forgotten dog-girl martyr of the uplifted animal underpeople. “Drunkboat” tells of a pilot who went mad in hyperspace and whose mind cannot readjust to three dimensions. “A Planet Named Shayol” tells of a prison world where drugged, deformed prisoners are used to grow extra limbs and organs for the utopian Instrumentality beyond.

All of these stories take place in the same universe, a universe with so much history forgotten and remembered and reforgotten that our own era is known as the Second Ancient Days–rediscovered, as they were, after the First Ancient Days (those date to around 12,000 A.D.). Each story hints at the thousands of years of backstory that came before it, but none stop or stoop to explain this context.

What gives these stories their strongest staying power, however, is their lancing moral clarity; Smith converted to Christianity late in life, and this spiritual rebirth infused his later stories with a sometimes harrowing spirituality–sometimes Christian, sometimes non-denominational. Take this passage from “The Dead Lady of Clown Town,” when the awakened D’Joan addresses the fearful animal underpeople for the first time:

Said little Joan, “I bring you life-with. It’s more than love. Love’s a hard, sad, dirty word, a cold word, an old word. It says too much and it promises too little. I bring you something much bigger than love. If you’re alive, you’re alive. If you’re alive-with, then you know the other life is there too–both of you, any of you, all of you. Don’t do anything. Don’t grab, don’t clench, don’t possess. Just be. That’s the weapon. There’s not a flame or a gun or a poison that can stop it.”

“I want to believe you,” said Mabel, “but I don’t know how to.”

“Don’t believe me,” said little Joan. “Just wait and let things happen. Let me through, good people. I have to sleep for a while. Elaine will watch me while I sleep and when I get up, I will tell you why you are underpeople no longer.”

Or this passage, from “A Planet Called Shayol,” when a deformed prisoner, freed from his centuries of torture, demands retribution against his jailer:

“The doctor has been cured and his memories of this erased, so that he need have no shame or grief for what he has done.”

“It’s unfair!” cried the half-man. “He should be punished as we were!”

The Lady Johanna Gnade looked down at him. “Punishment is ended. We will give you anything you wish, but not the pain of another.”

Or the rambling revelations of “Drunkboat”’s hyperspace-addled captain:

“What I found in space-three…this is what I now remember. Maybe it’s a dream, but it’s all I have…I was a boat where all the lost spaceships lay ruined and still. Seahorses which were not real ran beside me. The summer months came and hammered down the sun. I went past archipelagoes of stars, where the delirious skies opened up for wanderers. I cried for me. I wept for man. I wanted to be the drunkboat sinking. I sank… I heard phosphorescence singing and tides that seemed like crazy cattle clawing their way out of the ocean, their hooves beating the reefs. You will not believe me, but I found Floridas wilder than this, where the flowers had human skins and eyes like big cats… I can’t forget the pride of unremembered flags, the arrogance of prisons which I suspected, the swimming of the businessmen! ”

“What I did, I did not do. What I did not do, I cannot tell. Let me go, because I am tired of you and space, big men and big things.”

Smith’s stories have an inexplicable surety that reinforces their apparent simplicity. His future history is heavy with the ghosts of forgotten tales, but the ones we have are strong enough to carry the weight of the universe.

I’m reading Calvino’s Invisible Cities and found a passage that describes well my time in Tokyo:

The city appears to you as a whole where no desire is lost and of which you are a part, and since it enjoys everything you do not enjoy, you can do nothing but inhabit this desire and be content. Such is the power, sometimes malignant, sometimes benign, that Anastasia, the treacherous city, possesses; if for eight hours a day you work as a cutter of agate, onyx, chrysoprase, your labor which gives form to desire takes from desire its form, and you believe you are enjoying Anastasia wholly when you are only its slave.

National Novel Writing Month is a grassroots initiative wherein participants attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in its entirety during the month of November. 60 minutes and 37 words later, I’m giving up. Maybe next year?

You can get the new Saul Williams/Trent Reznor album FOR FREE at:

http://www.niggytardust.com/

It’s actually very good–kind of like a hip-hoppier TV on the Radio.

Their Sunday Bloody Sunday cover is crazy awesome.

i need excellent costume ideas that can be made from simple household objects

At least cigarettes are filtered.