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oh cool....i actually have just recently bought a phillip k. dick novel called flow my tears, the policeman said. i had read an article about him and wanted to check something out, so i looked through all his books still in print and ordered the one with the coolest plot line. this one is about an insanely famous TV star who wakes up one morning to find that his identity has been erased. cool stuff...i keep hearing wonderful things about this guy, so we'll see. i can't wait to start it.

new radiant storm king - singular no article..... 3.5 (ok, worth having, not their best, not their worst)

saul ste. marie - press & drizzle.....2.5 (just sounds like two guys jamming...nothing i couldn't duplicate right now with my roommate...bleh, glad it was free)

~fygmynt

i don't know a whole lot about him, but i do know that he's been dead for about twenty years...and that he wrote WAY more than a dozen novels. closer to forty or fifty, i think. not all of them were good, but enough were, i suppose...

i heard my first negative appraisal of him today, but i'm still eager to start in on the book i bought a while ago. right now, i'm reading a nicholson baker novel called the mezzanine right now and it's great...dick will be next, i think.

~fygmynt

ok, a couple new albums to blab about.

moldy peaches - the moldy peaches.....4 (i *love* this record. it's the ugly duckling of the underground. if you lived in the 80's and have any tolerance for "cute" low-fi pop music, this is for you. it is very cute, and very low-fi. i saw these guys--there are two singers, a guy and a girl in their twenties, who mostly sing duets, sometime singing completely different lyrics at the same time--open for the strokes, and they had a great live show. i wasn't going to buy this album, but i found it for 8 dollars on sale, so i had to pick it up. especially after i listened to a few songs at a listening station at my favorite local record store downtown. it's such a comforting album. i mean, they cover "little bunny foo foo" for pete's sake! just take a gander at some of these great lyrics, the first example taken from the song "nothing came out," which is now one of my favorite songs of the year: "and besides, you're probably holding hands / with some skinny pretty girl who likes to / talk about bands and / all i wanna do is ride bikes with you / and stay up late / and watch cartoons" ... "i'm just your aveage thundercats ho" ... "here is the church and here is the steeple / we sure are cute for two ugly people / i don't see what anyone can see in anyone else / but you" ... "up-up, down-down, left-right, left-right, b, a, start / just because we use cheats doesn't mean we're not smart" [anybody that's ever loved the nintendo game contra knows how brilliant that line really is] .....those are just a few among many. what a wonderful surprise.)

bobby conn - the golden age.....3 (i give this a rather low score because i had such high hopes for it. i was certain when i bought it that it was going to be wonderful, but such is not the case, unfortunately. i had heard one song before buying it, and that one song was superb, really groovy and dance-worthy, and i was told the album followed its example. maybe, but that song is three times as good as anything else on the cd. the record is all the buzz here in athens, but i find the guy's voice to be extremely grating. the music is good, granted, but not good enough to cover for the vocals.)

i'm also listening--right now--to the tenacious d album for the first time. it's really hilarious, and the music isn't bad, either. but i'm not going to rate it because it isn't that type of record i don't think. it's making me laugh my ass off, and that's quite enough.

i'm looking forward to two cd purchases next week; oranger ( doorway to norway), which i ordered online last week, and the new silver jews record which i haven't heard anything from, but i love the band.

as for books, i'm about ten pages away from finishing the mezzanine, and i love it. i love nicholson baker. i think i'm moving on to the philip k. dick book next.

books i've read more than once? let's see:

- the hobbit (tolkein) - at least 6 times
- lolita (nabokov) - at least 3 times
- breakfast of champions, bluebeard, cat's cradle, slaughterhouse-five, hocus pocus, welcome to the monkeyhouse, and mother night (vonnegut) - between 2 and 4 times each
- the book of frank (black) - 3 times
- alice in wonderland, etc. (carroll) - twice
- crime and punishment (dostoevsky) - twice, not because i wanted to
- ethan frome (wharton) - twice...great book, hated by way too many people
- as i lay dying (faulkner) - twice (for two classes)
- swan song (mccammon) - twice (splendid book, underrated author)
- adventures of huckleberry finn (twain) - twice
- snow country (kawabata) - twice
- the stranger (camus) - twice
- their eyes were watching god (hurston) - twice, bleh

i think that might be it. i mean, a lot of the times, i read passages multiple, there's a million short stories i've read up to a dozen times (poe, wolff, kundera, saunders), and i've read the seventh chapter of warren's all the king's men at least ten times. lately though, i've been obsessed with reading entirely new stuff, new authors, so i've been branching out a good bit.

interesting question...how 'bout yourself?

~fygmynt

yeah, despite the underlying tragedy of kelly gang, i felt that it was a truly inspiring story. when i finished, i somehow felt really optimistic about what the story had to say about good men (whether or not kelly was really that good a man, i'll never know). one of the best books i've read this year, though...i really liked it.

twice yesterday, i started in on books i had recently bought, only to be disgusted before i got to page 40. both the age of wire and string by ben marcus, and flow my tears, the policeman said by philip dick are going to be returned to books-a-million. the first was interesting, but made no sense, and by page 35 when i still didn't know what the hell was going on (i mean, there was no narrative, ever, it was just a bunch of long paragraphs that felt like a journalist on crack, followed by these lists of bizarre definitions that were nothing like what the word really means), i decided to call it quits. then i dove into the latter, pretty excited to be starting it, and was almost immediately turned off by his prose, which i thought was extremely clunky. not musical at all. the story still intrigues me, but i can't get past the guy's elementary writing style. oh well.

~fygmynt

the ship you are talking about (that got caught in the antarctic ice) was called the endurance, and the hero of the story is ernest shackleton, probably the greatest figure in antarctic history. after the ship was trapped, he helped his crew survive a vicious 15 month entrapment, and when the ice finally broke up in spring--the ship had long since been crushed by the ice sheet--he and three others took a small whaling boat (the kind that hang off the side of bigger ships) and sailed 800 miles across the cruelest sea in the world to the small island of south georgia (using only the most primitive of navigational aids). once there, he led his small party over the mountains to the opposite side of the island where a whaling station still operated. recruiting a ship and crew from the whalers, shackleton returned to pick up his men. not a single member of his crew died through the whole ordeal.

pretty amazing, if you ask me. i have a book on it--a very nice, well-illustrated--but i haven't yet gotten a chance to read it.

i'd be interested to hear your review of the documentary if you ever find it.

i got a new record today (surprise, surprise): the new silver jews. when i listen to it again tonight i'll post my review (not that anybody is clamoring for one)....i also saw monsters, inc earlier this evening. made me feel all warm inside, quality flick...

~fygmynt

ok, so i've given it a few listens now, and i think i'm familiar enough with it now to post some sort of review....

silver jews - bright flight....4 [ok, so first off, it is immediately obvious that stephen malkmus had nothing to do with this record. excepting perhaps silver jews first album, the splendid starlite walker, this is berman's most countrified offering yet. and i like it...lots. countrified, yes, but not amateurish as the debut certainly was. no, the playing here is exceptional, and if it weren't for scoping out the liner notes, i'd believe that berman picked himself up a new band. there are solos throughout--guitars, piano--and they all sound wonderful. the lyrics are top-notch as always...hats off to the poet laureate of indie rock (i think he's published two volumes of poetry so far). another thing i noticed is the story-teller quality, more dominant on this record than any before it. very low-key verses with maybe some guitar strums and that's it, definitely highlighting the vocals and lyrics. which is just as well. it's a rowdy album, but rowdy in a comfortable fashion. i get clear images of front porches and cows and cowgirls and smokey mountains. "tennessee" and "let's not and say we did" are friggin' stupendous. if you're a fan of the starlite walker end of the silver jews spectrum, this is highly recommended. if you aren't, it's still recommended, just prepare yourself for a country/western record.]

there ya' go. in the midst of writing this, i was making a "best of pavement" mix tape for a 2 hour drive my girlfriend and i have ahead of us today. goin' to macon to eat turkey with the folks. 110 minutes of pavement music, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie, my sweet girl sittin' next to me.........IS THERE ANYTHING BETTER?!?!?

nah.

~fygmynt

speaking of knowles...does anyone remember what the sequel to a separate peace was called? i could look it up, but....

let's see: lots of catching up to do.

just finished the best book i've read all year, two girls, fat and thin by mary gaitskill...the only modern writer who rivals nabokov for the sheer beauty of their prose. god, so brilliant, so humbling. i bought two extra copies to give as christmas gifts.

music:

oranger - doorway to norway.....4 (their debut, very punky and in stark contrast to their beatlesesque follow-up, quiet vibration land. has some great, anthemic moments.)

george harrison - all things must pass.....4.5 maybe 5, i haven't yet decided (maybe the best old album i've bought all year...or at least the most pleasant surprise. concretized george's position as my favorite beatle, despite all the crazy religion stuff)

led zeppelin - zoso.....5 (the best hard rock album of all time, period.)

pixies - complete b-sides.....3.5 or 4 (i don't know, this one's pretty self-explanatory)

bon jovi - slippery when wet.....3.5 (guilty pleasure and a guilty purchase. i'll probably never ever listen to it...i just like to think about the fact that i own it)

joe pernice - big tobacco.....4.5 (the album that's gonna make me have to change my year-end best of list...this guy puts out three albums a year it seems like, all under different names...this time he's simply gone with his own name. great rootsy record, it'll make my top five.)

~fygmynt (yay spongebob)