Max Ernst

Ratatat are producing Despot's record, if that ever comes out. Also, some good rap songs with annoying "vocals": Man, Big L had so much potential. He could have been the best, his talent was undeniable. Unfortunately, his output is limited to a patchy debut album with some pretty uninspiring beats, and some killer verses among his crew. But hey, this song is still pretty incredible. Every fucking line is delivered perfectly. Also, the guy in the hook (Kid Capri, I think) calls him "big fella", which is fun. Hey, this song has two great verses from two great rappers and the Black Milk knows how to program drums better than anybody else. Also, Danny Brown is wearing a big hat and isn't doing the dumb old man EDM stuff he is currently releasing. There are a lot of video game references in this song for some reason.

How is the prose? I hear that Saunders is someone you have to become acclimated to, like Pynchon or Wallace. Also, I read two books recently, one non-fiction and one fiction. The non-fiction was Nothing to Envy, a look at the lives of the people of North Korea. More journalistic than sociological, this was a heartbreaking book that followed the lives of a few individuals and their internal conflicts (that is their utter devotion to the Great Leader and the blatantly dire circumstances around them) that ultimately cause them to defect. The author, Barbara Demick, expertly weaves in the political and historical causes for the indivual hardships, so this book serves as a good primer as to the formation and fall of North Korea. Demick also dispels a lot of myths about the region, such as that the residents are stupid to believe their absurd propaganda, and those suffering in a communist regime lack initiative because they are so used to depending on government. Pretty much required reading. The fiction book was Gardener from Ochakov by Andrey Kurkov. It was a light, fun novel that mixes hard drinking and time travel. The characters were delightful, and Kurkov has a wonderful, economic prose, but the story struggles spreads itself thin between being an inner journey for a fuck-about protagonist and a comment on Soviet nostalgia. It's like Murakami decided to cut all his breakfast scenes and every second sentence. While the writing itself is so focused, as Kurkov has a tendency to describe a scene so vividly by describing one detail, this ends up harming the book's themes and plot. I'm now reading Voices from Chernobyl, which is an oral history of the nuclear disaster of 1986. It is better than any science fiction you have ever read. The people are so expressive, so poignant, and each with a different perspective of the disaster, the government's role in its clean-up, and how to deal with such a catastrophe. The author put the whole book up on his website here, but I'm reading the paperback.

Aw man, we do not see eye to eye on this. For me, this is a bunch of legacy bands releasing their least interesting works. I wanted to like these records so much more than I did.

Crosspost!

My favourite albums of the year (no real order): Parquet Courts - Light up Gold Chance the Rapper - Acid Rap Vic Mensa - Innanetape My Bloody Valentine - m b v Earl Sweatshirt - Doris Also, I liked Neko Case's record but didn't listen to it enough to include it with the rest of the albums here. Albums that I listened to a lot but didn't come out year include the second White Lung record, Burial, and the second Elvis Costello album.

Cool flash game based on a single idea? A half-related idea leveraged to awkwardly plug a few of my favourite art games? Are video games art? If so, are these our urinal in a gallery? Let's find out: Everyday the Same Dream: Do you hate your job? Is office life a soul-destroying cycle? Why would you play a game that replicates this monotony? Play it to find out! One Chance: The world is ending in six days! Oh no! What do you do if you knew that every living thing in the the world would die in six days? Would you try and stop it? Stick your dick in a pumpkin? The game does some browser wizardry to ensure that you cannot replay this game. No Walking Dead "what happens when I tell that guy to fuck off like I should have done in the first time"- your decisions are final. It is sad. Unmanned: A day in the life of a drone pilot. It's heavy.

This was a good episode but the question of sexism was side-stepped a little with that whole 'returning of the game because of the protagonist's gender' story. I think Steve was hinting at it by repeating the phrase "that's weird", but Craig wasn't biting and then the conversation moved on. It's a shame, because NOLF is this weird, forgotten beacon of early 2000s gaming in which the gender problem in games was solved so wonderfully. I don't think Craig saw his feminist lead character as anything but an interesting story and a way to add depth to a character, and not as a meta-textual critique of video game narratives and audience expectations. I liked this episode a whole lot, and I hadn't played much of NOLF. Good job, Steve. Also, I didn't like F.E.A.R., but this enhanced my appreciation a lot.

Jeff Green is a treasure.

Toni Morrison's Sula and JMG Le Clezio's The Giants. Two very different perspectives. One, on being a woman of colour and how that the dynamics of the 'other', while the other is a take on how material culture does not just corrupt in its practises, but also how the messages of consumerism drown meaningful thought. I went for two books that are very different and could be considered essentially perfect. I was thiiiiis close to putting Flamethrowers on there, because darn it did I enjoy that novel.

Method And Red are such good entertainers that they want the mopey security staff to have fun.

I am jealous of those that make games for a living, but I am so glad I am not in the industry. The whole thing sounds terrifying, career wise.

Sometimes, it is a matter of quality control. I hate watching a bad film, and what I consider bad is a pretty high standard. I don't have a more refined taste than anybody else, but I watch films so rarely (more of a book guy), that when I do I want it to really count. By sticking with a good directer The other thing is that I have a weird thing with following an artist's progression. When you watch enough of their films and start to tally up motif's and themes, you can really understand their world view and their views on art and storytelling. Watching an artist progress with their view, and watch how it refines and morphs, is fascinating to me. Particularly when the tone remains pretty similar, but the story elements are completely different. I love watching how Lynch goes from something like Eraserhead to Mulholland Drive, and how you can see an interesting progression and through line from the the former to the latter, and how the seeds of his later works are buried in even in his earliest works.

Genuinely curious about your stance on Godard. Thanks for the suggestions. I am not a big film guy, so this kind of project takes me years. I am very picky with what I watch and have a weird intolerance to middle-brow horseshit, so it's nice when I find a director that I really like. I incidentally did Lars Von Trier, and that was testing. He is such a wonderful film-maker and storyteller, but has such a shitty view on people, and particularly gender that can sometimes hold back his films. While I think films like Antichrist and Melancholia are criticisms of the hubris of men, his earlier stuff does seem to simply hate women. It's such a conflicted viewing experience. The latter is his strongest film visually and thematically.

Original misspelling aside (I blame my phone), I think Godard I much prefer the earlier work. While I find every obscure film I could, I mainly stuck to the feature length stuff. This whole on and off again, part-time project took me five years. His 60's films are incredible, from Vivre sa vie to Made in U.S.A. They can be tonally all over the shot, so a certain 'style' is hard to nail down, but a certain melancholy does filter through all of his works. His 70s works are not as consistent, but obscure gems such as Here and Elsewhere make it worth going through. Even when his films don't succeed, they are always fascinating. I don't remember much about his 80s stuff except I really liked Every Man for Himself and did not care for King Lear. I have forgotten so much about his works over the years I guess I will have to rewatch them again.

Ayo, I just exhausted Goddard's filmography. Who should I jump to next?

Double post, but cool Franzen interview here. Neat quote:

I saw The Comedy and it was a pretty great take on washout Williamsburg hipster deadbeats. It was a really interesting look at individuals who are so entitled and friction-free, they will do anything they can to provoke a reaction from the outside world. It was weird to see Tim Heidecker in a dramatic role, but after the first few scenes his performance won me over. Also, it features William Basinski in the soundtrack, so that was pretty swell.

Some sort paranoid feedback loop that will drown itself in Deus Ex and Keanu Reeves references.

I will agree with that. Also, there is a weird, semi-racist Pokemon joke in there. Literature.

Neat list of games for non-gamers, as per this podcast's conversation. Gone Home is on it!

Finishing Bleeding Edge. It is a fine, fun novel, but it has less to say than some of his other works. It wonderfully details how pop culture becomes a vehicle for our understanding of ourselves and our shared experiences, and it does a great job of (as per the epigraph), making New York a character in itself. However, the book veers towards fun more than profound, and it lacks some of those passages about the human condition that makes Crying of Lot 49 one of my favourite novels.

It's a movie about turtles who know martial arts. It is going to be stupid. It is going to be for children.