November 16, 2014

See previous Sunday entry for the basic rundown.

After a Geer Street dinner we settled down to watch The One I Love, an indie (it has a Duplass) that starts out rom-com but then turns weird. It’s all very my-first-feature and you’re wondering how the director got this cast on board (Mark Duplass, Elisabeth Moss, Ted Danson) until you start reading the fine print & realize that the director is Mary Steenburgen’s son, and thus Ted Danson’s stepson.

Nevertheless, it’s pretty good. I mean, Elisabeth Moss! OK, I’ll readily admit that I had totally forgotten that she had played Zoey Bartlett on the West Wing until IMDB just told me.

November 16, 2014

November 9, 2014

Sundays are ultra-predictable for the most part:

Like literally I could cut/paste that list every Sunday & it would be accurate.

Reviews this week: Jenks Miller & Rose Cross NC at Hopscotch, and the brand new T0W3RS record. Sorry, not going to paste those reviews here – they’re “reviews” for WXDU meaning they’re mostly intended to provide a small amount of context, a wee bit of insight into which songs sound like what, a list of any bad language, and a ranked list of fave songs to play on the air. They’re highly utilitarian & by longstanding tradition aren’t published outside of the station.

Anyone who has ever done college radio will likely know what I’m talking about – it’s a tradition that transcends.

Dinner at Geer Street, which was wilder than usual on a Sunday night. 

Tried to start reading the new Paolo Bacigalupi, but 10 pages in it was just unbearably YA, much moreso than Shipbreaker/Drowned Cities. That’s partly because it’s set in something much closer to the present – it was a Banksy reference that finally made me put it down in disgust. It was done in that facile, covertly condescending way that makes me hate Cory Doctorow’s books.

Paolo: More flooded future-world speculative fiction, fewer insta-dated popcult references, please!

In that moment of weakness I went ahead & bought the new William Gibson. I had persisted through the Bigend trilogy but was so nonplussed by the time I reached the end that I hadn’t really even paid attention to the press around the new one.

But hey, so far, 30-40 pages in, it’s pretty darn good. Not remotely as glib as the Bigend books. I’m sure I’ll report again as I progress through the thing.

November 9, 2014