From: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org (loud-fans-digest) To: loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Subject: loud-fans-digest V3 #122 Reply-To: loud-fans@smoe.org Sender: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk loud-fans-digest Monday, April 28 2003 Volume 03 : Number 122 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: [loud-fans] blur, thrilling tales (ns) [Aaron Mandel ] [loud-fans] ...and you will know us by how the weasel goes? [Jenny Grover] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2003 10:25:03 -0400 (EDT) From: Aaron Mandel Subject: Re: [loud-fans] blur, thrilling tales (ns) On Sat, 26 Apr 2003, Roger Winston wrote: > I'm with Aaron on this one. It was like... okay... transgendering... I > get it... can you please tell an actual story now? Yeah. Though to be fair, looking back at that period in Vertigo comics we also find Wanda in Sandman, who's clearly supposed to be a very sympathetic character but is handled in a way that makes me wince now. Handling trans characters is difficult. > Does the latest DP series continue in the same vein even a little bit? I haven't read it, but Morrison's New X-Men feels in some ways like a continuation of the Doom Patrol -- the first storyline just seemed to be about glorying in brutality, but since then it's become very interesting. a ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2003 13:04:02 EDT From: JRT456@aol.com Subject: Re: [loud-fans] blur, thrilling tales (ns) In a message dated 4/26/03 8:27:30 PM, rwinston@tde.com writes of Rachel Pollack: << I'm with Aaron on this one. It was like... okay... transgendering... I get it... can you please tell an actual story now? >> Don't forget the schoolgirl lesbian love action...although I still prefer Caitlin R. Kiernan for transgendered comic book authors. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2003 11:21:58 -0700 From: Tim Walters Subject: Re: [loud-fans] blur, thrilling tales (ns) On Saturday, April 26, 2003, at 07:03 PM, dmw wrote: > (although, Tim, i'm worried i'm not smart enough to read > _Appleseed_...) Fear not. It's a total-immersion experience, to be sure, and Clute's prose is somewhat knotty (in a nice way), but I don't think it's as difficult as some reviewers have made it sound, especially for a reader with a strong sf background. On the Pynchon Scrutability Scale I'd rate it about a V and a half. For those who don't know what we're talking about, APPLESEED is John Clute's recent post-post-modern space opera. Here's an excerpt to chew on: http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/appleseed.htm ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2003 14:44:03 -0600 From: Roger Winston Subject: Re: [loud-fans] blur, thrilling tales (ns) At Sunday 4/27/2003 01:04 PM -0400, JRT456@aol.com wrote: >Don't forget the schoolgirl lesbian love action...although I still prefer >Caitlin R. Kiernan for transgendered comic book authors. Yeah, Kiernan actually made The Dreaming interesting for awhile, though I wasn't able to quite ride it out to the end. I haven't read Bast yet, but it's sitting in the pile over there somewhere. At Sunday 4/27/2003 10:25 AM -0400, Aaron Mandel wrote: >Morrison's New X-Men feels in some ways like a >continuation of the Doom Patrol -- the first storyline just seemed to be >about glorying in brutality, but since then it's become very interesting. I read the first couple of storylines. You're right about the first one being about shock, but I'm guessing that was just Morrison's way of shaking things up and proclaiming how Different he was going to make things. I've got the last year's worth sitting in that same pile - I'll probably get to them eventually. I was intrigued by what he was doing with Xavier. Latre. --Rog ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2003 22:30:21 -0400 From: Richard Gagnon Subject: [loud-fans] To comics what Walter Carlos is to music? >Roger wrote: >I'm with Aaron on this one. It was like... okay... transgendering... I get >it... can you please tell an actual story now? Although following Grant >Morrison is never easy, so I gotta give her props for at least trying to >keep on the same wacko path while doing her own thing. I'm with Rog and Aaron on this one. (Sorry, doug...) Nothing I can add to the Rachel Pollack Monomania thread, but I thought I'd chip in and take a cheap shot at Grant Morrison: Following Grant Morrison is so hard to do, in fact, that Grant Morrison himself can't do it. I've rarely seen such a consistent track record among writers of comics for inability to develop interesting premises and end the friggin story on a coherent, satisfying note. Rick - -- *********************************************************************** Read the Brill Building story in comic strip form at: http://www.richardgagnon.com/1619_Broadway.pdf ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2003 19:34:25 -0700 From: Michael Zwirn Subject: [loud-fans] Review: Pedro the Lion, April 25, 2003, Portland OR So it was late on a Friday night. Long week behind you, your belly full of chicken tikka masala, and the last thing you'd ordinarily want to do is stand on the hard concrete floor of an all-ages club, enduring derivative opening bands in advance of the moralizing Christian emo headliner. But Pedro the Lion, led by David Bazan, is one of the most interesting and thought-provoking bands out there right now  2002's Control is an embittered masterpiece that mercilessly dissects the hypocrisy in American religious, economic and political life. The show was part of the 3rd Anniversary celebration for The Meow Meow, and the club was packed with young alterna-Christians and indie kids, in their uniforms of obscure t-shirts, ironic 1970s-derived sneakers, band pins and oversized backpacks. Pedro can put on astonishing shows. Opening for Low at the Somerville Theater in 2000 or so, Bazan did a stripped down with a 3-piece band, and they were tight tight tight, delivering compact, precise little melodramatic songs, each one illuminating our collective and individual shortcomings, while offering the faintest hope of salvation. At The Meow Meow, as the headlining act, Bazan was free to be a little indulgent in front of his core fanbase, which sapped some of the momentum of the set. But individual songs were still mesmerizing, despite the typically crummy sound: "Second Best" exploits one's settling for mediocrity; the amazing "Penetration" conflates commercial greed in the recording industry with sexual conquest. "Indian Summer"  which vies with "Priests and Paramedics" for the most memorable Control tune  was marred by Bazan losing track of the verses, but was the showcase for some inventive keyboard work. He premiered some songs from an upcoming solo project, one a bitter political screed called "Backwards (Backwoods?) Nation", and detoured through some of the older Pedro the Lion material. "Criticism as Inspiration" (from The Only Reason I Feel Secure EP) aims its barbs inward at an abusive boyfriend; "June 18, 1976" is a morose suicide tale. The most interesting element in Pedro's music, as far as I'm concerned, is Bazan's ear for dialogue and his ability to synopsize a nasty moral question in the form of a brief rock song. Indeed, during a question and answer period, one fan asked, "You seem to present a lot of moral dilemmas in your songs. Do you think that there is an absolute moral standard that applies for all people?" Bazan, after some hemming and hawing, concluded that there probably wasn't. But you can certainly hear plenty of moralizing in the lyrics. In "Magazine," he concludes: "This line is metaphysical .... on the one side, the bad half live in wickedness, and on the other side, the good half live in arrogance." Pedro has never shied from aiming its criticisms at the weaknesses of the followers, the narrators included. At times, his acuity is frankly hilarious. One piece has two friends talking late into the night, and one tries to turn the conversation toward religion. He hears a voice in his head, saying "shut the fuck up," and tries to drown it out, thinking it's Satan ... "and after all / he didn't really think God would talk that way." Openers were Ester Drang, whom I didn't hear, and the overly Curesy Stratford 4, whom I found engaging only during their self-referential, self-disparaging final song, in which the singer's mother tells him, "There's more to life than the Stratford 4." Indeed. - --------------------- Michael Zwirn, michael@zwirn.com (t) 503-232-8919 (c) 503-887-9800 http://zwirn.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2003 21:01:08 -0600 From: Roger Winston Subject: Re: [loud-fans] To comics what Walter Carlos is to music? At Sunday 4/27/2003 10:30 PM -0400, Richard Gagnon wrote: >Following Grant Morrison is so hard to do, in fact, that Grant Morrison >himself can't do it. I've rarely seen such a consistent track record among >writers of comics for inability to develop interesting premises and end >the friggin story on a coherent, satisfying note. Animal Man is a good example of that, even Doom Patrol to some extent. I didn't make it all the way through The Invisibles, so I'm not sure where that ended up. I think the problem is that he blows his wad in the beginning, and then the only way he can top himself is to make it weirder and weirder until there's little coherency left. Even though you do get the sense that he planned it out from the beginning and that there was a point, and that he achieved his point. But maybe my non-surrealist mind is not capable of getting the point. But man, those beginnings were friggin' brilliant. I'm rambling. Latre. --Rog ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2003 23:03:43 -0400 From: dana-boy@juno.com Subject: [loud-fans] mistakes were made (ns) I did a lot of dumb things this weekend, and thought I'd detail them so others can avoid my errors. 1. Don't buy import DVD's (part 2 of the new blur single comes on DVD, to be specific) when you don't have a multiregion DVD player. I don't know why that didn't occur to me at the time, though it would have been nice if the record store mentioned this at the time of sale, for their stupider customers. Come to think of it, though, I bought that import Mute Simon Fisher Turner DVD, and that plays fine. Why, blur, why make it only for the UK? 2. Don't buy multiple CD's of old Bee Gee's rarities, when said CD's say specifically on the back that they come from fan tapes and acetates, and are for the true fan only. Not a total waste, but I don't think I'll be listening to these much. The song about Mrs. Gillespies' refrigerator is pretty good, though. 3. The Barry Dransfield reissue that gets a big spread in the new Mojo *is* folk music, and it *is* experimental in a sense, but not in the sense that I thought. Be aware that, though it looks like it might be one of those fantastic lost folk-psych things from the early '70's, it is in fact very much a folk album in the traditional sense. Not bad, but not what I wanted. 4. I'll have to give it more time, but the Jack Bruce reissues (I bought his first) are not what I was expecting. 5. Ween's Pizza Hut jingles really suck. Don't waste your time. Sigh. On the plus side, some very beautiful red tulips bloomed yesterday in our back yard. And, the guy who runs Rockit Scientist was nice enough to make me a CDR of "White Light, White Heat" in mono, and it *is* pretty great in mono, especially Sister Ray. - --dana ________________________________________________________________ The best thing to hit the internet in years - Juno SpeedBand! Surf the web up to FIVE TIMES FASTER! Only $14.95/ month - visit www.juno.com to sign up today! ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2003 23:57:53 -0400 (EDT) From: Aaron Mandel Subject: Re: [loud-fans] mistakes were made (ns) On Sun, 27 Apr 2003 dana-boy@juno.com wrote: > 1. Don't buy import DVD's (part 2 of the new blur single comes on DVD, > to be specific) when you don't have a multiregion DVD player. I just paid $18 for a Moloko album I already had because this version came with a DVD of videos. Same problem. Wouldn't it make more sense to have it be regionless? There's a DVD-drive in my laptop but the program I found on the web ("DVDBackup") that claims to rip data files and remove region coding from them leaves me with a menu that does not lead to any videos playing. How incredibly frustrating. a ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2003 22:36:31 -0600 From: Roger Winston Subject: Re: [loud-fans] mistakes were made (ns) At Sunday 4/27/2003 11:03 PM -0400, dana-boy@juno.com wrote: >1. Don't buy import DVD's (part 2 of the new blur single comes on DVD, >to be specific) when you don't have a multiregion DVD player. I don't >know why that didn't occur to me at the time, though it would have been >nice if the record store mentioned this at the time of sale, for their >stupider customers. Everyone should have a multiregion DVD player. And if you want to play UK discs, you should have one that does PAL to NTSC conversion properly (believe me, I had one that didn't, and you could really tell). The Malata N996 that I (and glenn and doug and Steve S.) have does all that and more. I love the zoom/pan features and the movable subtitles. I don't think the N996 is available anymore, but possibly the replacement DVP-520 is just as good, if not better. I've seen it at HKFlix for $275 (http://www.hkflix.com/hardware/malata_dvp-520.asp), but other retailers off the beaten path may sell it as well. I just watched a region 2 Mike Oldfield concert PAL disc on my N996 the other night, and it looked/sounded great. Latre. --Rog ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2003 02:02:04 -0400 From: Jenny Grover Subject: [loud-fans] ...and you will know us by how the weasel goes? I was just reading a ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead review, and came across the genre term POP. So, is that some trendy shorthand for power pop, or is it an acronym of some sort, or what? Anyone know? Jen ------------------------------ End of loud-fans-digest V3 #122 *******************************