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QotD: I'm reading (or about to read)...

What books are on your nightstand?

Having just finished Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age this evening [1], I've got the following books queued up next:

All books about food! I guess I'm a bit obsessed.

[1] I'm working my way backwards through Stephenson's stuff, though of course I did read the Baroque Trilogy in the proper order, as doing otherwise would've been fairly silly.

The Diamond Age

TDA started out a little bit slowly for me--which always tends to be the case more w/ fiction than non-, just because I don't really care that much about anyone in the story, and it has no grounding in reality. But and also I'm not really a fan of science fiction that much--or really, fiction in general--and so it took me about a week to get through the first 75 pages of TDA, because it suffered from some of the typical things that annoy me about science fiction, particularly the overuse of jargon-y language.

But once I told myself to just sit down and fucking read it this weekend, it turned out that I really loved it, as I figured I might. What struck me most about it is how apt its subtitle ("Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer") is--said primer is one of the key items in the book, obviously, but it's also a remarkably apt description of this book, in the way that it's basically a young Victorian woman's saga wrapped up in science fiction garments. Which probably explains why I enjoyed it more than most science fiction.

QotD: In Heavy Rotation

What albums are in heavy rotation for you right now?

My current favorites, both old & new:

All perfect summer fare: CSS, wonderful & wicked fun (listen to "Music is My Hot, Hot Sex"); Richard Hawley, mellow & fantastic for a relaxing weekend; A Tribe Called Quest, timeless, smooth, & just incredible.

2 Read

There's probably something longer to write about this, being as how much I absolutely adored Infinite Jest [1] & pretty much everything else that David Foster Wallace has written, but I just love DFW writing about tennis, and his "Roger Federer as Religious Experience" fit the bill for a good Sunday morning read. (via Kottke)

Crossworld

And as for books: I've been intermittently reading Marc Romano's Crossworld over the past couple of weeks [2], and it's good, though not great. But I sat down & finished it this weekend, and really, really enjoyed the following passage.

The scene is that the publisher of Games magazine, where Will Shortz was working, set up a meeting between Will and Bill Clinton, while Clinton was running for president. For the meeting, Will prepared a fifteen-by-fifteen crossword puzzle. Clinton warned that he was busy with the campaign & wouldn't have much time for the meeting, but:

Once Clinton saw that Will was in earnest, he agreed to doing the puzzle. He told an aide that only the most urgent calls were to be passed through, clicked the timer on his wristwatch, and set about solving Shenk's grid. Will fell silent, but Clinton said, "Go ahead; don't stop asking me questions," and he answered them as he filled in the puzzle. About three minutes into the proceedings, the phone rang; Clinton clicked the timer off and answered the call, which was long and involved. (Will later found out it was from the Reverend Jesse Jackson.) When he was done, he clicked on the timer again and finished the puzzle--in six minutes fifty-four seconds. When the meeting was over, Will and Shenk looked at Clinton's answers. They were 100 percent correct.

Yet another reason to love Bill Clinton: he's brilliant at crosswords!

[1] a summer reading project, if there ever was one, and it was, most definitely, for me, back in college.

[2] hoping for something as brilliant as Stefan Fatsis's Word Freak, but never really finding it, in Crossworld.

"I've been a bad, bad man..."

White Bread, Black Beer

Scritti Politti

Here's what I'm saying tonight [1]: Scritti Politti's White Bread Black Beer is the best album thus far of 2006, and is the album that hundreds (thousands?) of indie pop bands have tried (more or less unsuccessfully, compared to this) to make for years.

It's a low-but-hi-fi, a one-man-but-many show, an album made in the back room of a London flat & sounding like it should be heard on movie soundtracks & dancefloors & backyard stereo systems all alike. The album that, if there were justice in the world, would finally give the twee indie-popsters of the world some much-needed sense--this, this, is how you make a pop record.

[1] And for the last three months, but only in my head.

Saying Yes!

I have amazed myself by reading yet more books. I just can't stop reading books!

These are those books, read largely in July and early August:

A Long Way Down isn't Hornby's best, but it's a good & fast read; Cryptonomicon was completely fucking mind-bending & brilliant & just a totally engrossing story; Count Down was interesting material, but felt like a really, really long prologue to an actual story; Yes Man was another fast read and is both very funny and oddly moving in places [1].

All of the above recommended, but in particular Yes Man & Cryptonomicon [2].

[1] "Oddly" particularly for a book that feels a bit gimmicky, at first glance and/or read of the flap. The premise is that the author decides to say "yes" to every opportunity offered to him over the course of a year, and the book documents that year.

[2] Yes, I'm quite late on reading Cryptonomicon. I started on the Baroque Trilogy and finished that last December, and was so, so happy to find Cryptonomicon just as amazing a story.

QotD: Key words

I really enjoy dominoes. Not "domino", the singular, but "dominoes" plural (& I like the "oes" more than the "os", though I admit I don't actually know which one is really correct).

I also quite like: cull; absolve; avocado; and crumple.

I dislike: lite; overnite; and other words that shouldn't, but in many cases do, end in "ite".

This is re:

What are your favorite and least favorite words?  Any reasons why?
Question submitted by Byrne.

"Moped in your face!"

So this probably isn't actually my favorite cover track of all time, but it's pretty incredible all the same, and so I just have to share it: Moped's [1] "Clocks Remix", which is a cover/remix of Coldplay's "Clocks", done all Europop style with house beats & brilliantly poor Eurorap. I downlaoded it sometime in 2003, if I remember correctly.

Clocks Remix

Moped

Reasons why I love this include:

Coldplay are insufferable because they're just so serious about everything, so I just love the idea of Chris Martin hearing this & getting all offended that they've taken his extremely earnest piano line and turned it into a disco rave-up.

The KLF

Moped are so-named as a tribute to Scooter, an actual Europop band with some brilliant dancefloor-filling singles, and who've taken several pages from the KLF's Manual for writing #1 pop hits: huge beats, dramatic keyboard breakdowns, EuroMCs shouting over the din, "live" sounds of crowds roaring their approval, &c. [2]

I love the KLF, hence I love Scooter, hence I love Moped. Q.E.D.

[1] I don't know exactly who Moped are/were, though as best I can tell it's one of the people in this group (Emmet).

[2] Though the helium-voiced vocals are Scooter's addition to the basic KLF sound.

QotD: Can you hear me now?

What's your cell phone's ringtone? What made you pick it?

My ringtone is so seriously sad that this is really embarrassing, but for the last two years, it's been Usher's "Yeah". And the thing is, in the last year and 11 months, I've probably heard it five times, because I always have my phone on vibrate. But even admitting this makes me sad, in the sense that it was kind of lame in mid-2004, but now it's just full-on pathetic in mid-2006.

Even worse may be that over the past month or so I've been watching Lionel Richie's video for "Hello" [1] (creepiest video EVAR!) somewhat obsessively. Here it is, for your viewing pleasure:

Lionel Richie - Hello

And so, today, I downloaded a polyphonic ringtone of "Hello". It has a good build, where it's sort of just smooth & jazzy up front, and it takes a little while for you (the listener of my new ringtone) to recognize it--and then it's kind of like like an old creepy teacher stalking his blind student (spoiler!), "Helloooooo".

[1] Probably after seeing it again on Pitchfork's list of 100 Awesome Music Videos, complete with this brilliant line:

Every time Richie mimes "hello" like it's the most sincere hello ever offered in the history of hellos.

So true!