links for 2007-11-30

• The 10 Best Books of 2007 - New York Times
  Perhaps once this semester actually ends, I can read all of these. An amazing prof @ BU introduced me to Denis Johnson, I'd like to check him out again.
  (tags: books)

links for 2007-11-25

• Kenmore Square bus shelter construction plagued by problems, delays
  I think Kenmore Sq is just trying to fight back: stop making me into something I'm not. Or, you know, state mismanagement.
  (tags: boston)

links for 2007-11-24

• Barely Getting By, Too Proud to Seek Help and Facing a Cold Maine Winter
  I'd like to take Viola Brooks to the hairdresser.
  (tags: maine)

links for 2007-11-21

• Jim Houser Interview
  I forgot how much I liked this guy's art.
  (tags: art)
• Jim Houser - SWINDLE Magazine
  An interview by Shepherd Fairy. I want to remember to pay attention.
  (tags: art)

Getting kind of LiveJournal

Well, not so much.

Often when I really need to focus on work that is code-based or else drawing a schematic (like last night and tonight), I listen to Hole. I'm not sure why. It's a little angry and I don't get caught up in the melancholy as I do with 90% of the other music I listen to.

However, I can't stand it when she sings Found pieces of Jennifer's body... so I usually skip to the next song or else turn to some more local anger. Hate My Way and others of that time from Throwing Muses works for me, too ("I could be a smack freak/And hate society/I could hate god/And blame dad"). Kristin Hersh is amazing.

This is one of those "what I ate for lunch today" posts that no one (but me) cares about.

3 Years Late

I'm 3 three years late to Chrystal, the film by Ray McKinnon and Lisa Blount. I wish I had known to see it in the theater. What an amazing, heartbreaking (yet you crack a smile and laugh a few times) film. It brought me into the South the same way Dorothy Allison's words do and not in that rebel-flag-waving caricature way that we too often see in the movies.

I don't think the soundtrack is available, so instead I just bought Roscoe Holcomb's a capella Moonshiner and Dock Boggs singing Sugar Baby, though I'd much prefer to have a copy of Lisa Blount singing it on the porch.

Meanwhile my 2007 Oxford American movie edition is floating around and its dvd has a clip of McKinnons' The Accountant that I should check out.

Chrystal was one of the most real films I've seen in a long time.

links for 2007-11-03

• Technicality may end student program
  This is insanity.
  (tags: idiot)