May 21, 2004
Friday and I'm Not Famous Yet
Posted by nerdling | May 21, 2004 10:18 AM
Sure, he's chubby and a purveyor of that horrible branch mass market fiction known as 'lad lit'—only slightly less odious than its cousin, the demeaning and awful 'chick lit'—but Nick Hornby does love rock 'n' roll, and God bless him for it. Mr Hornby has an op-ed piece in the NY Times today about the past, present and future of rock 'n' roll.
In his introduction to the Modern Library edition of "David Copperfield," the novelist David Gates talks about literature hitting "that high-low fork in the road, leading on the one hand toward `Ulysses' and on the other toward `Gone With The Wind,' " and maybe rock music has experienced its own version. You can either chase the Britney dollar, or choose the high-minded cult-rock route that leads to great reviews and commercial oblivion. I buy that arty stuff all the time, and a lot of it is great. But part of the point of it is that its creators don't want to engage with the mainstream, or no longer think that it's possible to do so, and as a consequence cult status is preordained rather than accidental. In this sense, the squeaks and bleeps scattered all over the lovely songs on the last Wilco album sound less like experimentation, and more like a despairing audio suicide note.
Courtesy of the BBC, here is more information on the upcoming Ian Curtis/Joy Divion film travesty with musical elements shaped by Moby.
The Real Tuesday Weld on NPR. {Via largehearted boy.}
In an article that only a few of you could possibly find interesting, Stanley Fish—famous literary theorist and professor—has contributed to the NY Times on the role that academia should have in the world. Here's a hint: it is not what is going on at the moment.
The Gmail craze has already started and nerds the world over are clamoring for beta accounts, which can only be acquired by invitation from a Google employee or Gmail user. To see the full extent of the frenzy visit gmailswap.com, where people who want accounts are offering any number of goods and services in exchange for an invitation to try Gmail.
Some of my personal favorite items up for trade: a formal dinner at Worcester College, Oxford University; an introduction to Tiddlywinks from the #1 ranked high school player in the world; 9,000 ladybugs; this bartender will name a drink after you; sophistry bolstered by Hume, Berkeley and/or Kant; a human kidney (shipping not included); and an Arachnid of Foresight, imbued with the Elixer of Knowledge.
In other weird news, Jesus loves porn stars. The XXXchurch is on a mission from God: to conquer masturbators, fornicators and pornographers. Big props for making a Jesus action figure that looks even remotely like the desert-dwelling, Middle Eastern Jew that he was, however.
