You are the light by which I travel to this and that.

By now, I am sure most of you read that article about Jens Lekman since about every blogger has linked it in one way or another, but I just have to quote this amazing sentence:

First, he is, yes, it's true, prone to the sort of twee self-regard that converted Wes Anderson, midcareer, from a promising filmmaker into an antique tea table.

Thank you, Stephen Metcalf.

Oh, how I really like the Pretenders' song, "Back on the Chain Gang"

A song of the west.

The title is true. I like it a lot. Especially the "huhs" that are totally a female 80s version of Lead Belly's. Awesome.

What I don't like, on the other hand, is the sudden influx of spam I am receiving at my radio email account. About 50 a day at a minimum. It's truly annoying. Especially since I had to go 257 emails today to find the one from JFranc sandwiched between the drugs and the watches.

Since I got back from Colorado (which I will one day get to posting about), I have done an abundance of nothing with an intermission of after-Christmas shopping and about ten movies interspersed throughout. I will now provide you with short reviews in the form of title, Netflix star score I have assigned, and then a couple of comments. By the way, if you have Netflix, we should become weirdo Netflix friends because it's fun to see other people's movie selections.

1. American Hardcore 3/5 solid, but too much Henry Rollins.
2. A Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake 3/5 interestingly ethereal, but nothing superb.
3. Glory Road 3/5 (I would've given it a 2.5/3 if I could) unoriginal, but it wouldn't have been horrible if I hadn't seen basically the same movie three hundred times before.
4. Kill Your Idols 2/5 I wanted to like this. I didn't. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs don't need to take up so much of the film.
5. High Society 4/5 I love Bing Crosby. And Cole Porter tunes are always solid.
6. Enchanted 3/5 cute. more than that? Not really.
7. Neil Young: Heart of Gold 3/5 Not enough Harvest. But Jonathan Demme is an excellent filmmaker.
8. Tales of the Rat Fink 4/5 I knew nothing about Ed "Big Daddy" Roth. Now I do. Plus Brian Wilson was the voice of a car, and not an animated car! And the movie was scored by the excellent band The Sadies.
9. Let's Sing a Song of the West (not on Netflix). An old (1940s) short fewer than ten minutes long. Four fab old songs with words on the screen to sing a long with them being acted out. So great.
10. Charlie Wilson's War 4/5 Grand. This is the only one from the list you can see in theaters. Go do so!

Best of 2007: Concert Photos!

You can read Dave Rawkblog's post that inspired this one. It's worth reading both because, uh, I like my photos better. haha. Plus, we went to totally different concerts ( I think there is only one overlap). These aren't the best of the concerts, just the best of the concert photos. Click the photos for full-size pictures. In reverse chronological order:

Sea Wolf @ UCLA 11.29.2007
Sondre Lerche @ Troubadour 11.13.2007The Shout Out Louds @ The Fonda 11.06.2007 Josh Ritter @ The El Rey 10.25. 2007
umm, blues guys @ Motor Ave. near post office 10.18.2007Detour Festival @ LA City Hall basically 10.06.2007

Swerve Festival @ Barnsdall Park 09.20.2007Robbers on High Street @ Troubadour 08.07.2007
silhouette!

1990s @ Troubadour 08.07.2007
Charanga Cakewalk @ Getty Summer Sessions 07.28.2007

Os Mutantes @ The El Rey 07.13.2007

The Noisettes @ Troubadour 06.15.2007
The Maccabees @ Troubadour 06.15.2007
Phantom Planet @ The Roxy 05.29.2007The Sea & Cake @ Troubadour 05.19.2007
The Parson Redheads @ The Echoplex 04.26.2007
super blurry, but super fun
Sondre Lerche & the Faces Down @ The El Rey 03.21.2007
The Cold War Kids @ Troubadour 02.22.2007
These folks like to run around and jump a lot.

Baby, it's cold outside.

I am in Colorado; my lips are beyond chapped. But, I have sledded, snowmobiled, ice skated! Pictures and stuff to come.

1-Adam-12, 1-Adam-12, 459 suspect there now.

It is 11:08pm and I am at home! Fab. Too bad I still have to write two response papers that were due last week. oy!

In a case of real life imitating art, the 6oclock news informed me that someone stole a mother's car which had a bunch of Christmas presents for her kids in its trunk. And the LAPD saved the day. Of course, Adam-12 did it a little better. It was the day of Christmas Eve and they found it just in time. Plus, I am pretty sure there was a snake involved somehow. (Officer Pete Malloy was afraid of snakes). This is my second favorite television programme of all time. You should check it out, folks.

Today, after my lovely two hour nap (since I had to wake up at 7am for a final--oy!), I watched disc two of The Johnny Cash Show DVD. While the DVD itself isn't so well put together, there are some super solid performances. Roy Orbison did the classic "Cryin';" Neil Diamond did some song or another super excellently--I now know why my mom thinks he is attractive. Also, it was pretty awesome to see Eric Clapton, as part of Derek and the Dominoes, perform with Carl Perkins and seem so in awe, especially after a whole quarter of blues history and kinda hating Eric Clapton.

I think these are really awesome. Now whether or not they would actually look good on any man is another question. Still, awesome.

Ummm, so I can fit a picture in here and make this post prettier in a somewhat related way. The following picture is related to school. yay, it fits!

This is not my favorite TA. This is, however, my most handsome TA.

I am going to use this word in some future post and I just thought you might like to know what it meant beforehand.

Friar's lantern (FRY-uhrz LAN-tuhrn) noun

A phosphorescent light seen over marshy ground at night, caused by spontaneous combustion of gases emitted by decomposing organic matter. A synonym if foxfire (not Firefox), especially for luminescence by fungi.

[The first use of the term is in John Milton's 1632 poem L'Allegro: "She was pinched and pulled, she said/And he, by Friar's lantern led."]

Midnight Yell.

I am finally starting my response papers that were due last Monday and Wednesday for my blues class. And, the links to the songs won't play. Gah, this is when my mother would conveniently exclaim, "You should never save anything for the last minute; you never know what might come up." Thank you, mother. Boo, internet. But, Law & Order: CI just always takes precedent.

I also watched the Bob Dylan movie, I'm Not There, today. It was so bizarre. I didn't really understand it and I know quite a fair amount of Dylan's story. So, uh, hmmmm. It wasn't bad, but I also don't think it was worth nine dollars. Also, why is Heath Ledger playing a ton of jerks these days?

Anyways, since I am apparently not writing essays anyways, I am going to create a wishlist to further fuel my materialism. Chanukah doesn't end until Tuesday, folks! Not that I expect any of my, oh, three, maybe four, readers to get me any of this stuff and thus it will include some completely unrealistic stupidly-expensive items that I really wouldn't want anyone to buy anyways--I just would like them to magically appear in my possession without anyone having to pay anything.

A set of 6 of these, please. ;-)So cute. Turtle Hare! painting.

Okay, I am actually just going to go to sleep since I am not getting anything done. Jonathan Gold wrote non-food articles, woah! Especially woah that Jonathan Gold wrote an article entitled "N.W.A.: A Hard Act to Follow."

Also, apparently people actually engage in Midnight Yell. weird. and so prompt, too.

Brian Wilson is a resident of Bellagio

While this jacket is completely awesome in all its absurd glory,


why would anyone brag about the fact that it is made out of Tyvek, "same stuff they use to wrap houses." weirdo ebay seller! Nevertheless, this is totally the kind of thing I would buy and then never wear. Good that I would never wear it, since it is hideous; bad that I would still buy it. Thankfully, it is already out of my price range for things I buy but never wear (that's capped at 25 dollars).

I am listening to Neko Case so loudly that I didn't realize it was raining.

I am so excited about this rain! Going to make some tea in the morning and get the gas for my fireplace turned on (Although, I am still disappointed that is a gas fireplace and not a real one. sad). Speaking of gas, I spent two hours today preparing foods for a Chanukah dinner. Two hours! Making latkes which I don't even like just because one needs latkes at a Chanukah dinner. And then, thirty minutes before people are supposed to arrive, my stove top won't turn on! So I knock on the doors of the two people I know on my floor and they don't answer. So I end up cooking latkes in some random people's apartment (and to continue the running motif of recent entries, they were watching Law and Order while I was doing this, although it was SVU of which I am no fan) and it was super awkward. And because of this awkwardness, I rushed the cooking and they weren't so fab. Bah! At least the salad was delicious. haha.

As promised to some folk, what follows is an awesome documentary made for the BBC in 1972 called "Reyner Banham Loves LA" which I first watched in my Los Angeles in Film class freshman year. It is spectacular. Please note the Shaft-esque music. Also, I am in the process of reading Banham's Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies and I highly recommend it.

"And you might wonder what I am doing in Los Angeles, which makes nonsense of history and breaks all the rules. Well, I love the place with a passion that goes beyond sense or reason."

um, it is 4am

And I am just finishing my paper. I think it's like noon for you UKians/ites/ers. Carazy. Surprisingly, I am not exhausted. Although I think I actually am and have just tricked my brain into thinking I am not. The true test will come tomorrow when I fall asleep in the shower. What an unfestive first night of Chanukah.

I could put in some really nice picture to accompany this lame post but the eyelids are closing.

Brought you to by Tammy Farkas.

Woo google searches by other people that give such Laura-esque results.

LAist again!

Woo!!!!! LAist picked one of my photos as their featured photo for "The Sunday Photoist." And, because it happened to be a photo from Automatic Stapler, I basically turned the description into an advertisement for the radio station. Yay!

Please allow me to be vain for a moment.

Thank you Chanukah!

edit: I had to return the boots. boo!

Curiosities of Note

This 'cycle' of America's Next Top Model's Saleisha is always referred to as 'oh, that commercial girl with an edgy haircut.' I really cannot comprehend how her haircut is so edgy, since it is just basically a bowl cut. Oh, and the fact that it looks exactly like the haircut of Tootie from the Facts of Life. ummmm, not edgy. Sorry. Please compare:

Secondly, what the hell is Saleisha? Especially the way they say it Silesia, like the oft-contested region in central Europe (the region from which my mother hails!).

On a side note, Donald Sutherland was at Freud Theater this afternoon to see the super creepy Teatr Zar's Gospels of Childhood.

Edit: I forgot to mention that Brandon Boyd and another Incubus member were eating at Mao's Kitchen last night whilst I was there. He is not a handsome person.

Another edit: I just realized how awesome this post is. Teatr Zar is from Silesia!!!! Oh man! So perfect.