The first book I remember reading by Diana Wynne Jones was Archer’s Goon. I was probably around ten or eleven at the time – sixth grade, at any rate – and I have no idea where the book came from. I’m pretty sure it came from the library, but I can’t recall if I or my father picked it out. The Central Library’s Young Adult section was pretty small – two or three shelves – so I feel like I read just about everything they had at some point or another in junior high.

I loved Archer’s Goon. As soon as I finished it, I immediately went back and reread it. That year, for Christmas, I know I asked all of my extended family members for a copy of the book, so I ended up with at least three copies for Christmas that year, all of which I kept. It’s hard to say what, exactly, made me so obsessed with the book. Part of it was certainly my life-long Anglophilia. Part of it was the blending of magic and everyday life. Part of it is that fondness I have for stories that hint at a much larger and more interesting story of which we can only see a small corner. Whatever it was, I knew I had to track down everything I could by this author.

In short order, I got my hands on as many of her books as I could. A Tale of Time City, which I can distinctly remember reading in my junior high bedroom. The Homeward Bounders, which I found a discarded library copy of at John K. King Books. Charmed Life and The Magicians of Caprona, which I’ve recommended to at least twenty or thirty people over the last few years whenever anyone enthuses about Harry Potter. Warlock at the Wheel and Other Stories, which I found in the kids section at the library. Fire and Hemlock, which continues to sit very deep in my subconscious, feeling more like some half-remembered series of events that actually happened to me than like a book I read (though I’m at least partially sure that’s what happens in the book, which confuses my memories even more).

When I was in junior high, I was pretty nerdy (even moreso than I am today). I didn’t really listen to popular music. I had, at most, a handful of friends, many of whom would turn on me by the end of eighth grade. My family life was getting increasingly chaotic – I added three siblings in the summer between sixth and seventh grade. Unsurprisingly, I spent a lot of time reading, and, by far, my chief obsession during this time period was Diana Wynne Jones.

It helped that her books were not easy to find. Every bookstore I passed, I would go in and look for any of her books. When my mom started grad school at University of Toronto, I started visiting Canadian bookstores, which carried far more of her novels, since they were in print in the UK, if not the US. I quickly added Eight Days of Luke and The Time of the Ghost to my collection, which are two of my favorites, along with Witch Week, Dogsbody, and The Ogre Downstairs.

As I got older, the books stopped resonating for me quite so much. I remember reading and enjoying Howl’s Moving Castle, but mostly I just remember wanting to lift ideas from it for a D&D campaign I never got around to doing. I know I got The Lives of Christopher Chant as a Christmas gift when I was thirteen, and it was fine, but her books just didn’t seem as vital to me. I don’t think it was her writing; I think I just didn’t need to escape into them quite as much. Maybe I was getting too old, or maybe I had other things to immerse myself in (like music). I recall reading Castle in the Air and just not feeling engaged at all. I think that was probably the last of her books I read.

I still went back to Archer’s Goon on occasion. It’s a deeply strange book, and I’ve made lots of other people read it over the years. I’ve got the BBC adaptation on my computer, but have never been able to watch it, since I know there’s no way it’s as good as the version in my head.

Yesterday, I found out Diana Wynne Jones had passed away. I don’t usually get quite so upset about the deaths of people I don’t really know, but that news left me feeling off all day. Once I finish my current reading stack, I think I’ll be going back to re-read a few of hers. Or maybe I’ll just see if I can talk some more people into reading Archer’s Goon.

Normally around this time of year, I try to put together a Top 10 list of albums for the year. For most of the past year, I’ve actually been working in an office, which is a big change for me, and it’s kind of thrown off my listening habits. I haven’t been staying on top of current music at all. I mean, I’m usually lousy about listening to new stuff promptly, but this year I’ve been just terrible. I tried to make a serious push in December to catch up with everything I hadn’t heard, listening to roughly 150 albums over the course of the month. Not every album got a full listen. If no one I knew had recommended it and it didn’t grab me in the first ten or fifteen minutes, I usually moved on to the next one.

Once I got down to that set, I had a hard time cutting down. I kind of felt ambivalent about all of them, and, at one point, I was just going to do a big post with a little something about all thirty of the albums that I was somewhat enthusiastic about, but, after a while, I realized I didn’t actually care about many of them to even write a paragraph. That helped me whittle it down to a top ten, so here goes.

1. Woods – At Echo Lake
   I feel kind of bad I’ve never heard of this band since this year, given that their previous releases were all co-released by Shrimper. I can’t entirely pin down who this band reminds me of. There’s certainly a lot of Bingo Trappers in there, and the vocals are somewhere between Neil Young and Dennis Callaci. I love that they’re doing L.A. Canyon Sound thing, but filling in around that with interesting noise. It’s a wonderfully warm album that I can’t really stop listening to. I’m a little scared to see the band live, since I’ve read a fair bit describing them as more of a jam band, but this album is pretty much perfect.
   
   

2. Ted Leo & the Pharmacists – The Brutalist Bricks
   Until the last few weeks, when I’ve been pressed to name a best album of the year, this has been my answer. It’s their best album since Hearts of Oak, arguably even better (Oak has better singles, but this is a better album on the whole, I think).
   
   

3. Superchunk – Majesty Shredding
   The more I listen to this album, the more I like it. It’s a little front-loaded, maybe, but it’s a solid album. I think it’s probably got the most bona fide singles of any Superchunk album (“Learned to Surf,” “Crossed Wires,” “Digging for Something”, and “My Gap Feels Weird” are all great), but I’m not sure it entirely comes together as an album.
   
   

4. Betty & the Werewolves – Tea Time Favourites
   
   I remain a little torn on this band. I am not entirely sure I can argue for the artistic importance of a band that sets out and entirely succeeds to replicate the sound of Tallulah Gosh, but, on the other hand, I am extremely glad to have a new album of ersatz Tallulah Gosh songs to listen to.
   
   

5. Miniature Tigers – F O R T R E S S
   
   The first time I listened to this band, I mostly just felt old. I’m not sure what it was about this band, but there was something about people that I’m sure are about fifteen years younger than I doing the same sort of 60’s pop recycled through a lo-fi indie rock aesthetic that seemed exciting during the Elephant 6 explosion fifteen or so years ago. A few weeks later though, I ended up with “Rock and Roll Mountain Troll” stuck in my head for about a week, and ended up relistening to the album many more times.
   
   

6. Orca Team – Let It Go
   
   Pretty sure I saw Orca Team more than I saw any other band this year (though, now that I think of it, might be tied with Superchunk). The album’s pretty fun. Kind of sinister surf pop that reminds me a lot of the second Rosebuds album.
   
   

7. The Futureheads – The Chaos
   
   I feel kind of ashamed to like this band as much as I do. I really enjoyed their first album, but, again, felt a little ashamed about it – enough that I didn’t really pay much attention to them until this year. Their new album is hard to ignore. The XTC influence is still very, very strong, but they’ve grafted on a variety of guitar parts from the first couple Oingo Boingo albums, and added in a big chunk of late 70’s/early 80’s power pop. Maybe some Jam. And Beat? I am aware that referencing these bands is not going to win over a lot of people. Nor does it make me seem particularly cool or hip. That said, I really enjoy this album.
   
   

8. Dum Dum Girls – Blissed Out
   
   I am aware that it is incredibly pretentious to include the cassette-only release from this band instead of their actual album, but I find the album kind of dull. The cassette, on the other hand, is pretty great. “Hey Sis” is, without a doubt, the best thing I’ve heard from them, and, while I’m ashamed to admit it, I kind of like their cover of “Throw Aggi Off the Bridge” better than the original.

9. Jonathan Richman – O Moon, Queen of Night on Earth
   
   We saw Jonathan a couple times this year, and this album is pretty much a perfect replica of what his live shows are like these days (only much less sweaty). I’m glad he’s come out of his post-divorce depression, and can now write songs that are melancholy without being unremittingly bleak. The production on the album is great. It’s a welcome change from that awful Ric Ocasek produced one, and just feels like you’re hanging out with Jonathan.
   
   

10. Soda Fountain Rag – Reel Around Me

    The only reason this is coming in at #10 instead of topping the list is a pair of technicalities. The album’s nine songs long, but it’s a 10″, so I think it’s probably an EP. It also consists of re-recordings of old songs, which is good, but I would really like to get some new Soda Fountain Rag songs. On the other hand, I am really glad to have a nice sounding version of “Give Yourself a Break,” which was the song that first endeared me to this band. It probably says bad things about me that a song about cheering oneself up by laughing at drunks walking into traffic signs is the song that makes me become a life-long rabid fan of a band.
    
    

Runners up: Bedroom Eyes, Shout Out Louds, Tango in the Attic, Joanna Newsom, Harlem, Los Campesinos!, Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, Sambassadeur, Happy Birthday, Pill Wonder, The Splinters, Mighty Clouds, The Volebeats

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I put this up on Facebook last week, but I figured it deserved a proper post here. It’s been a long while since I recorded a song I wrote myself, and, while I’m not entirely happy with it, it’s not too bad.

It is, obviously, based on Hamlet, specifically Act I, Scene V. I was reading this interview with Stephin Merritt, and he was talking about songwriting cliches, like rhyming “dance” with “romance.” I started thinking about a love song in which the singer compares himself and his love to various other famous romantic pairs, only the singer would be kind of an idiot and assume that any pair of people he’d ever heard of must be famous lovers, thereby leading to a line in which he’d rhyme “romance” with “Rosencrantz.” I fortunately abandoned this idea, but then I started thinking about other Hamlet-themed songs, which led to this one.

As I said, it’s not a great song, and I’m not sure at all about the weird percussion in the bridge. For some reason, I wrote the song in E, which is really not a key I can sing, so the vocals are even worse than usual. I also expect someone to give me a hard time about some of those rhymes. “Horatio” and “you say she, oh?” “Serpent” and “usurp, and?” That’s just awful.

Last Sunday’s Oscars marks my traditional end of the movie viewing season, and is my cue to look at all the movies I saw from last year and try to come up with something approximating a top ten list. Last year I felt fairly apathetic toward nearly everything, even though I saw a fair number of movies. This year I managed to see even more movies, and, for the most part, I actually feel pretty positively about much of what I saw. As usual, the “mediocre” column is pretty hefty, but the “good” and “best” piles are much larger than the “bad” and “worst” piles.

Overall, I managed to see 77 movies released in 2009, 23 of them in the theater. Not too shabby! I actually have enough films that I liked that whittling down to a top ten list is kind of difficult, but here’s where I am today.

1. The Box

I am so clearly a sucker for Kelly’s particular brand of craziness. I really need to rewatch this one, since I’m not sure I can entirely explain what happened, but I just love the way Kelly takes this incredibly bare bones Matheson story and keeps expanding the backstory until it’s turned into this epic, bizarre world. I don’t know of any other director who works that way. Even David Lynch, arguably Kelly’s chief influence, has been known to rein himself in when working in Hollywood. I mean, Dune’s kind of odd, but I can only imagine how weird it would have been if Kelly had directed it.

2. Martyrs

This came out in France in 2008, but it never got a theatrical release here, so I’m counting it as a 2009. Martyrs has the problem that it’s one of the best movies I’ve seen in years, but I can’t recommend it to anyone (at least not if I want them to ever talk to me again). It’s one of the most disturbing films I’ve seen, not only on the gore/gross-out level, but on a philosophical and moral level. I also can’t think of another film that changes direction quite so abruptly and with so little regard for narrative conventions (and, yet, never suffers from the “this happened, and then this happened” pacing that a lot of films that try to cover a lot of ground, story-wise, do). It’s fantastic, but also nearly unwatchable.

3. Pontypool

I’m glad I saw this one twice. The bits that bothered me the first time (most of the third act, really) worked just fine the second time around. The acting is fantastic, the premise is great. I have no complaints. I’m pretty sure it’s the film I’ve recommended to people most often this year. And that opening monologue is pretty much the best opening I’ve seen this year.

4. Inglourious Basterds

Pretty much everything on this top ten list I feel like I need watch re-watch as soon as possible, but this one is probably #2 as far as “films I feel I need to rewatch to really appreciate.” Going in fairly cold, I wasn’t really prepared for the formal weirdness going on here. It’s not until the last chapter that we get anything that’s paced remotely like a normal movie (which, incidentally, is when I kind of felt the movie floundered a bit). I suppose if you have a low tolerance for Tarantino’s sense of self-satisfaction in his own ability to write dialogue, this film would be painful, but I have a very high tolerance for watching Tarantino characters doing nothing but talking (or, at least, talking until violence erupts and everyone dies).

5. Two Lovers

Phoenix’s performance here is the best performance I saw this year. It would be enough to carry the film, even if the director had no idea what he was doing. Fortunately, Gray does know what he’s doing, so all Phoenix has to make up for is Gwyneth Paltrow innate unlikeability. Also, Gray’s ability (and determination) to make Queens and Brooklyn look like the New York I grew up watching in the movies is fantastic.

6. A Perfect Getaway

Even on second viewing, I’m pretty convinced this film is cheating a bit, but it’s still a clever, fun movie with some really enjoyable performances. I will see pretty much anything Twohy does, even if he’s sometimes a little too clever for his own good.

7. Antichrist

I am apparently enough of a sucker for Tarkovsky that even Von Trier impersonating Tarkovsky is enough to put me into that semi-dream state that I enter when watching The Mirror or Solaris. The fact that Von Trier than spins off into horror film territory is perhaps odd, but no odder than the veerings into science fiction that Tarkovsky made. Actually, strike that. That’s not true at all. This movie is much weirder and more disturbing than anything Tarkovsky came up with, but I think it’s that tension between the gorgeous composition and the troubling content that really makes it work. Again, I need to rewatch this.

8. Un Prophete

This is probably right up there with Goodfellas and the first two Godfathers as my favorite films about organized crime. I love movies that really deal with the day to day mechanics of crime or prison life.

9. The Lovely Bones

I know I am going to get some flack for this one (if anyone ever read this, that is), but I really liked this one. I haven’t read the book, which I suspect helps, and I am very, very fond of Heavenly Creatures, so I am clearly an easy mark for Jackson’s brand of over-saturated, heart-on-sleeve filmmaking. I don’t really care that the premise is pro-death, or that everyone in that town would have to be completely oblivious not to suspect Stanley Tucci, or that the pacing gets really weird at times when years fly by. The whole thing really worked for me.

10. The Hurt Locker

This is now officially the best movie of the year, so I don’t really have to defend it, do I?

Runners-up (roughly in order): The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Moon, An Education, Whatever Works, Whip It, In the Loop, Sugar, A Single Man, The Limits of Control, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, A Serious Man, Crazy Heart, Taken, Knowing, Trick R Treat, District 9, Collapse, Tetro, Anvil! The Story of Anvil, Drag Me to Hell.

I don’t really want to spend too long discussing these, but, in case anyone’s curious, here’s my Worst of the Year list.

10. Nine
9. Surrogates
8. X-Men Origins: Wolverine
7. Pirate Radio
6. Terminator Salvation
5. The Blind Side
4. Julie & Julia
3. Avatar
2. Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire
and, without a doubt, the worst movie I saw last year….
1. (500) Days of Summer

Last night we had our more-or-less-annual Oscar party. Last year’s got canceled due to illness, so I was hoping things would go better this time around. I never really know what to make food-wise for these parties, but I started coming up with pun-driven foodstuffs based on the ten Best Picture nominees, and, once I came up with six or so, I couldn’t really stop. Then, once I had all the puns and recipes in hand, I pretty much had to spend hours Photoshopping movie posters to make tiny little movie posters with the dish names to put on the table. This may have been a bit compulsive, but it looked nice. We had a pretty good turnout, which is always nice, and I figured I might as well document the food part at least.

District 9 Layer Dip No real recipe on this one, since it pretty much just involves pouring a lot of stuff into a dish. From bottom to top: refried beans, guacamole, green chilis, corn, salsa, black beans, black olives, chopped tomatoes. The ninth layer was shredded cheese, but, since I was trying to make things vegan-friendly, that got served on the side.

Inglourious Batards I worked off the Rustic Bread recipe I found here. I didn’t really mess with it at all. I used rye flour and generally stuck to the recipe. I think this is only the second time I’ve made bread from scratch, and it came out pretty well, though it’s a very dense bread. As long as the slices were thin, though, it was quite good.

A Tapenaducation I was kind of surprised to learn how many tapenade recipes include anchovy. Since I was trying to be vegan-friendly whenever possible, that wasn’t going to work. I found this recipe online, and, even though the picture didn’t look too great, I gave it a shot. I omitted the green olives and did all Kalamata. It took a little tweaking (more salt, more lemon juice), but was pretty delicious, especially on the batards.

The Hurt Latke I’ve certainly made latkes before, but I’ve never tried to make vegan ones. I found a few people online who reported some success making it with egg substitute, which we had on hand from a previous party. My usual problem in latke-making is that the potatoes are far too wet. I tried wringing them out as best I could and even let them sit in a warm oven for a while to dry them out, but it didn’t seem to help. They still turned out well, even if they finished so late it wasn’t quite bright enough to get a decent picture.

Upplesauce Pretty straightforward. Peeled and chopped up about three pounds of apples, dumped ‘em in a pot with a little water, and let it cook for about a half hour or so. At some point, I added cinnamon, fresh nutmeg, and pumpkin pie spice. Eventually, it turns into applesauce. Delicious. Good on latkes. Very popular with the tiny guests.

Crème Fraiche-ous I didn’t get a picture of this one, since it’s the only thing on the menu I didn’t prepare, beyond opening up a carton of crème fraiche and scooping it into a bowl. A lousy movie deserves a lousy dish, but I know people like sour cream-y things with their latkes.

Avatarts This was the first dish I made. Eleanor made the pie crust (since she makes a great pie crust), then I rolled out the dough and put it into a mini muffin tin and baked the shells. I used this recipe for the lemon filling, which was good but a lot more custardy than I was expecting. I ended up doubling the amount of lemon juice, since it just didn’t taste lemony enough. I chilled them overnight and, just before putting them out, I squirted a little whipped cream on them and topped them with a little lemon curd. Very tasty, but the whipped cream didn’t really hold up long at room temperature.

A Serious Flan I was going to go with a more traditional (one might say “serious”) flan recipe, but I was a little worried about removing them smoothly from the mini muffin tin I wanted to use. I found this one online, and it sounded delicious, as well as being written specifically for a mini muffin tin. This dish was totally surprising. When I poured it into the tins, it just looked like a cake batter. The top got all golden brown, and they just looked like cupcakes. I was convinced the recipe had gone completely wrong until I cut the first one out. I was totally not expecting the weird translucent, glowing yellow layer, but it was pretty neat looking.

7-Up in the Air Two bottles of 7-Up, half a bottle of Trader Joe’s unsweetened blueberry juice, many scoops of vegan coconut ice cream.

The Blind Sidecar Always good to have an alcoholic drink to go with the non-alcoholic one, so made up a pitcher of sidecars (Cognac, Gran Gala, lemon juice). I made about four cups, put it in the fridge, then mixed them up with ice to order, served up with an orange twist.

So, all in all, a significant amount of food, made even more significant by the various things brought by friends (sausage dip, carrot cake whoopie pies, cupcakes, hummus, apple and onion tart, etc.). I’m a little concerned about how I’m going to meet or surpass this next year.

I managed to listen to every 2009 release I owned over the course of January, so I’d be prepared to come up with a well-informed Top 10 list. The first five positions were easy to come up with. These were, by far, the albums I listened to the most in 2009. The competition for positions 6 through 10 was a lot harder. There was a lot this year I liked, but wasn’t particularly fanatical about (hence the inclusion of the fairly sizable Runners-Up list).

1. The Thermals – Now We Can See
   Like I said, the top 5 here are the albums I listened to compulsively throughout the year, but I don’t think there’s anything I’ve come back to as much as this one. I’d been sort of on the fence about The Thermals for a while. Their previous albums seemed a little same-y, and I found them a little dull live. This album, though, is just unbelievable. Maybe it’s just because my hopefulness about my species has been pretty low lately, but an album about the death of mankind seems like just the right sort of thing to sum up the year.
2. BOAT – Setting the Paces
   This should come as a surprise to absolutely no one. BOAT are awesome. It did take me a while to get used to the more polished versions of a lot of these songs, especially since I’d been hearing them live for so long, but they’ve totally grown on me. Great album.
3. Hiawata! – These Boys and This Band Are All I Know
   What year-end list of mine would be complete without some Scandinavian indie pop? I know virtually nothing about this band. They’re from Oslo. They sound like some completely awesome blend of Ash, The Lemonheads, Sloan, and some other band that I haven’t quite been able to place. This album is incredibly solid. Pretty much the only song I ever find myself skipping is the title track. The whole album makes me feel like I’m back in high school, which is perhaps not a great endorsement, but I mean that in the best possible way.
4. A Sunny Day in Glasgow – Ashes Grammar
   The last Sunny Day in Glasgow album was great, but this one manages to be even better. I’m not usually the most enthusiastic listener of shoegaze, but this album is so textured it’s hard not to be impressed. They were already one of my favorite bands to listen to while writing, but this album is pretty much ideal. I can’t want to see them live this spring.
5. Yo La Tengo – Popular Songs
   I realize I might hold Yo La Tengo albums to a higher standard than I should. I mean, this is a great album. “Something to Hide” is one of their best mid-tempo rockers. There’s some interesting new directions in sound (like “Here to Fall,” which totally sounds like a theme song to the best James Bond movie ever. In my mind, it’s the Hal Hartley James Bond movie starring Martin Donovan (or maybe James Urbaniak)). Ira’s developed a pretty impressive organ playing style (like in “Periodically Double or Triple”) that sounds pretty much like his guitar playing. It’s undeniably a great album, but it’s not I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One. Still, I’m pretty sure it’s the best thing I think they’ve done in the last ten years.
6. The Besties – Home Free
   I was not overly impressed by the first Besties album. It was fine, but the songwriting just didn’t seem to be there. As a result, I kind of ignored this one when it first came out. It seemed a little more polished, but nothing that really grabbed my attention. But then the songs ended up getting stuck in my head weeks later. I figured that was a good sign, so I gave it a few more listens. I’m still not entirely sold. There’s something about the vocals that bugs me a bit, but there are some really solid songs there. “Man Vs. Wild” is the one that I spent weeks singing to myself while I desperately tried to remember who recored it, but “What Would Tim Armstrong Do” and “79 Lorimer” are both pretty great. Actually, there’s not really a total misfire on here. I wish I could figure out why I’m so hesitant to whole-heartedly endorse this band.
7. Jay Reatard – Watch Me Fall
   I hadn’t been paying too much attention to Jay Reatard over the last ten years. The Reatards stuff I heard in the late 90’s was decent enough, but I sort of lost interest in that particular blend of garage punk by the time I turned 25 or so. Somewhere in the last decade, Jay Reatard apparently started coming up with something fairly unique sounding. His vocals are just bizarre – there’s some 70’s punk group they remind me of, but I have no idea which. I really need to find his older stuff and see if it’s as good as this is, since, sadly, there aren’t going to be any new albums.
8. Nick Garrie – 49 Arlington Gardens
   I have pretty low expectations for any album recorded thirty-some years after an artist’s undisputedly best work, but this is really quite good. I probably shouldn’t be too surprised, since it’s got members of Teenage Fanclub and BMX Bandits helping out. It doesn’t have the same kind of bizarro psychedelic touches as Stanislas, but it’s a pretty solid baroque-folk-pop album with some very pretty songs. It’s hard to argue too much with “When Evening Comes.” I’m pretty sure this is the best new album I’ve heard from a 60’s icon.
9. Pintandwefall – Hong Kong, Baby
   Am I alone in liking this band? I have heard nothing about them, and all my attempts to get anyone else to listen to them have failed completely. Maybe I’m just totally off-base, but I really like this album. I mean, they’re Finnish, and I am clearly a sucker for Scandinavian bands, but they’ve got a nice, weird kind of post-punky rock sound that I really like. Plus they have a song about an octopus who sounds like Mr. Bean. What’s not to like?
10. Jeffery Lewis – Em Are I
    I kept coming back to this album throughout the year. There are some similarities to Kimya Dawson’s delivery that I found a little off-putting at first, but I can’t deny that it’s a very solid collection of well-written songs, and, more importantly, it’s a pretty fun album. Again, not really the sort of thing I usually get too excited about, but it’s been a weird year.

Runners-Up: Vivian Girls, Neko Case, tUnE-yArDs, The Clean, Skepta, A Hawk and a Hacksaw, Antony and the Johnsons, Wake the President, The 1990’s, The Victorian English Gentlemens Club.

It’s been a long while since I’ve posted anything here. It’s been a fairly rough summer and winter here, but I’m trying to get my act together a little bit. I sent out a fairly significant redesign of the chucklehound.com website today, as well as a few little tweaks to the blogs. I think I might need to grant myself an amnesty on the backlog of logging I have to do. Maybe just start with the most recent entries and work backwards if I really get inspired. Anyway, there should be new content here fairly soon.

Also, I’m nearly done with listening to my collection of 2009 releases, so I should be able to put together a Best of 2009 list before the month’s over. If I really get ambitious, I could try for a Best of Decade list. I’ve also got a bunch of selections from my alphabetical listening (which has largely stalled out somewhere in the O’s), but I’m not sure anyone actually downloads/enjoys those.

The first time I talked to Jos Claerbout was probably a month or so after starting at college. He was General Manager of KSPC at the time, and I was doing my afternoon show when he walked in. He asked my name and decided that my last name sounded similar to the title of the song “Grubdango” by Ruins, forcing me to play the song immediately. It was a pretty great song, though I’m still not sure how much the title really sounds like my name.

We saw each other periodically at the station and around campus that year. Like most people who were at Pomona around that time period, it was never uncommon to be greeted with a hearty “Mr. _____” from across a dining hall or quad. We had a few conversations throughout the year, most of which I’ve forgotten, but I do remember one night when Jos, Jano, and I were hanging out at the radio station some night discussing movie ideas. At the time, I was excited about the prospect of shooting a remake of Stagecoach that now involved radioactive mutants. As usual, Jos enthusiastically wanted to be involved, specifically as a mutant with his arm coming out of his head. Jano was purportedly the head of the student filmmaking group at the time, but we never got around to making that one.

Toward the end of freshman year, I recall having some sort of conversation with Jos about our shared dissatisfaction of life at Pomona. I was applying to transfer to a couple different colleges, and he was planning to take the next year off to go work in Alaska. At the end of that year, I didn’t really we’d ever see each other again, so I was fairly surprised to see him on campus sixteen months later.

Jos was living in a first floor dorm room overlooking a high traffic area, which generally led to an endless series of people coming to his window to talk to him. We started hanging out more often, usually discussing ideas for movies. I remember one he came up with that was about a pair of middle-aged Asian-American parents who are investigating the mysterious death of their child at college. I expressed admiration at the idea of offering up a middle aged Asian-American couple as the protagonists, which was exactly the aspect he was most excited about.

I tried to get Jos involved in KSPC again, but he was fairly adamant about focusing on his studies. His thinking that semester was that, if he was going to be at college, he really ought to focus on the core aspects of academia and avoid distraction. Of course, the biggest distraction, as far as he was concerned, was the location of his dorm room. Far too many people dropped by for him to feel focused, so, at the end of the semester, he put in a transfer request to move into the other half of the two room double I had been living in, which had been recently vacated by my roommate’s decision to spend a semester in Glasgow.

Of course, once Jos and I were roommates, the attempt to focus on academia rapidly went out the window. I convinced him to take over as News Director at KSPC, which cut into his academic time a fair bit. We spent a great deal of time working on various movie ideas – most of which I’ve forgotten, but one of which was based on our dorm layout. Our suite was kind of awkwardly laid out. The exterior door led into a large bedroom, which is where I slept. A doorway connected it to the smaller bedroom, which was Jos’, which was in turn connected to a bathroom, shared with another, similarly configured suite. This layout generally worked fine (except for the vile bathroom habits of the guys in the other suite), except that I generally kept later hours than Jos. He would usually wake up fairly early in the morning and would attempt to carefully sneak through my room to make it to the exterior door without waking me up. I’m fairly certain he never once succeeded in leaving the room without waking me.

One morning, in his attempts to sneak out, he knocked something over, and I woke up with Jos’ face about a foot away from mine, attempting to reassure me. “Everything’s fine,” he said. “Go back to sleep.”

We were discussing that incident a short time later, when we decided that’s exactly what he would have said if I’d accidentally awoken while he was in the middle of trying to kill me, which is what inspired our film concept (which, sadly, we never got around to making). Basically, the film was about two guys in a room much like ours – one of whom is a fairly meek guy, the other of whom never leaves his bed, but is capable of soul-crushingly withering put-downs directed at the milquetoast roommate every time he stirs. The meeker roommate tolerates this for a while, until he manages to get a date with the girl of his dreams. He’s elated, but then realizes that there is no possible way he could ever bring the girl back to his room, for fear of what the dozing roommate might say, so he begins coming up with a variety of means by which he might kill his roommate. I don’t recall all the failed attempts, but eventually he rigs up a massively complicated Rube Goldberg device that will crush his sleeping tormentor’s head with a bowling ball at the exact moment he opens the door with his date (I don’t remember why, exactly, he thought it would be a good idea to make the girl watch this – there was a whole subplot involving our friend Gordon as a love guru offering advice, so maybe this was one of his ideas). Of course, the roommate rolls over at exactly the right moment, and the bowling ball bounces off the bed and straight into the doorway, decapitating the meek protagonist. The sleeping roommate sits up in bed, gestures to the speechless girl in the doorway to come over to the bed. He lifts up the sheet and reveals a magical world of frolicking creatures and sunny meadows and such, and they climb into it together.

Jos was convinced the film should be called “Flummoxx,” because the extra “X” would stand for Generation X, and it would be the defining statement of our generation. I’m not sure I agree, but he was certainly enthusiastic (as he was about nearly everything).

I mentioned Gordon’s role in the film, but I’m not sure it’s possible to understand the level of excitement Jos had for the radio show Gordon was hosting at the time. Gordon was the host of a late night show that focused on love songs, particularly of the Barry White variety. One night, I helped Jos record a series of promos for Gordon’s show (the name of which I cannot remember right now – the velvet something?) featuring Jos as his new character, Dr. Smooth (named after the generic brand of Dr. Pepper found at, I want to say, Lucky). I am hoping these recordings still exist somewhere at the station, as I can’t remember the names of Dr. Smooth’s extended family, aside from that of the youngest, Little Baby Jaime Smooth. I can’t remember if Jos’ enthusiasm for Gordon’s show predated his fondness for discussing “nookie.” Again, there’s a Student Life opinion piece out there somewhere that he wrote about the virtues of nookie. He’s also the only person I know who made use of the verb form of the word, i.e., “to nook.”

That semester, we also set to work making our room a little more comfortable. We obtained a very cheap couch at a thrift store, as well as buying Jano’s family’s old TV, which were set up in the outer room of our suite, now dubbed (by Jos, obviously) “The Arango-Claerbout Pleasure Compound.” (There’s allegedly a Student Life article in which Jos explains how the room has been converted into a sex den. I have no memory of this article, but I found a mention of it in an old email.) We spent a fair bit of time watching movies there, usually Fear of a Black Hat whenever we could talk someone else into watching it.

Jos and I spent a lot of time together that semester. He started hanging out with my friends a fair bit (as well as flirting heavily with at least one of them), but I think we spent a lot more time working on movie ideas than anything else. I was taking a screenwriting course at the time, and, as I discussed the script I was working on, he got progressively more interested in joining in to make the story come together properly. One night, after helping Jos shave his head for the first time, he, Jano, and I headed out to Taco Bell to sit down and work out the storyline, which Jos and I eventually whittled down into Money, Hair, and Freedom. It’s fairly obvious to see which bits are inspired by Jos. It’s safe to say I wouldn’t have had a whole subplot with banda musicians had he not been involved.

This was also the semester when we came up with the ideas for Because They Can’t Shoot Us. We didn’t really get around to writing much of that one, but we sat down and mapped out all the scenes, which is what I used when putting together the actual script.

I think this is also when we came up with the idea of making a fictionalized biopic of the two of us. As I said, we watched Fear of a Black Hat a lot and agreed that the greatest thing it added to the Spinal Tap formula from which it lifted liberally was the post-breakup chronicling of solo careers. In our biopic, one of us would devolve into pointlessly pop-culture navelgazing ultra violence (Tarantino was huge at the time) and the other would start making ad campaigns for a variety of corporations (Ford, Microsoft, etc) that consisted of nothing but a black screen with the words, “Give Up.” Actually, now that I think about it, maybe those were both from the same fictional character. Regardless, that one never came together, but we spent a lot of time hashing it out.

We spent a fair bit of time discussing music as well, though I never shared his enthusiasm for L7 (I believe he had his command line prompt on the VAX/VMS system we used for email at the time to “jennifer finch: ” for his entire college career). We tended to agree on the Foetus live album, so we listened to that a lot when working. Strangely, we didn’t spend a lot of time playing music together; Jos seemed to have moved beyond his interest in playing music. He was certainly enthusiastic about music, though. When I recorded this song with my friend Kenji, he was incredibly excited. He was convinced Kenji and I needed to record more so we could put out an album (which we did) and become huge (which we did not).

That summer, Jos was planning to head to DC. I was on my way to New England to visit my girlfriend (now wife), so we decided we’d drive out together. On the last day of classes, we packed up my car and drove to Vegas to stay with a mutual friend of ours, Nat. We spent the day doing Vegas things; Jos was very excited about the pirate ships at Treasure Island and was generally thrilled by Vegas’ over-the-top qualities. We ate at Dive, which I found thoroughly overwhelming, but he loved. I’m not entirely clear on what time of day we were doing these things, but I remember we hit the road out of Vegas at dusk, in an attempt to avoid the scorching heat of the desert.

The trip started out well enough. We listened to Oingo Boingo’s Good for Your Soul and Joe Jackson’s Jumpin’ Jive on endless repeat, but eventually we lost momentum and struggled to stay awake. I remember pulling off the freeway on an off-ramp and waking Jos, informing him it was his turn to drive. Jos took the wheel, but didn’t really understand where we were (it being pitch black outside), so attempted to do a three point turn on the off ramp. Eventually, I managed to explain our position to him, and he took off down the road. We made it to Gallup, where we staggered into a convenience store to purchase some caffeinated beverages. We were really not prepared for the clerk with the horn growing out of his head, and, once we got back into the car, we were both fairly convinced we’d died some miles back in a fiery wreck and were now driving through Hell.

By the time we hit Amarillo around noon, we realized we couldn’t continue, so found a roadside motel. Jos attempted to convince the manager to give us a discounted rate since we’d just be staying for a couple hours and would sleep on top of the sheets. I can’t remember if it worked, but we slept, and then easily finished up the drive to my family’s house in Huntsville, Alabama. We spent a couple days there, I think. Jos was excited to see the city, since we’d set Money, Hair, and Freedom there. We met up with a friend from Pomona who lived in Florence and spent an afternoon canoing, followed by dinner with her family. It was after that dinner that we started talking about yet another movie idea – an episodic film consisting solely of dinners with friends from college. I don’t think we ever fleshed it out much more than that, but I’m pretty sure that’s what we discussed the rest of the trip.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. I remember this trip is when we finally discussed his name change. His previous name wasn’t really a secret (since it was legally his name when he started), but we’d never really discussed how he actually went about changing it or how he picked the new name. He explained that he’d never liked Jeremy, so decided he’d legally change his name to Johannes once he was in college. Once he had the paperwork, he realized he could just as easily change his middle name at the same time, so changed his middle name to Dianovich to honor his mom and her Russian heritage (since he didn’t want her to be slighted by his choice of a Dutch name).

The rest of the visit with my family went well, though I think he might have scared my little siblings a bit. He kept informing the family guinea pig that, if this were Peru, he would be eaten. He also had a chat with my brother about the importance of picking one’s nose in public, but made sure to express that there was no shame in nosepicking. I also remember that he used to threaten cattle as we drove by them. He had stopped eating beef after his time in Mexico, due to the ecological damage they were dong to the environment there. I’m not entirely sure how that translated to threats of violence toward cows everywhere, but he was insistent on berating cows whenever he saw them. I should also point out that his favorite word during this period was “bomber,” presumably intended as an adjectival form of “the bomb.” Sample usage: “Oh, that is just bomber. If this was any bomber, it would be Dresden.” I think it confused my parents. (Fortunately, I don’t think he made use of his other favorite phrase at the time, addressed to an unseen interlocutor and employed whenever I made a suggestion about which he was particularly excited – “Why don’t you see any little brown children following this man around? Because he doesn’t fuck around!”)

Eventually, we loaded back up into the car and drove up to Washington, DC. We spent the night with yet another mutual friend from college’s family, then I headed off to New England.

I exchanged emails with Jos throughout the next semester. His communications we’re not exactly normal conversations. Some samples:

"Escape From LA" truly was genius. The "Fear of a Black Hat" of Action films.

Saw the Squirrel Nut Zippers. Ate some Squirrel Nut Zippers. Nutty, with a
little bt of zip.

These sorts of emails are interspersed with epic tales of his life in DC, told entirely in the third person. I’ve got a giant one about his computer woes, entitled “Exercises in Incompetence with Jos.”

I also see mention of “The Jos Claerbout Center for Worldwide Shenanigans” from November of 1996. This was a plan Jos and I concocted that basically consisted of establishing a steady headquarters for us and like-minded people that would serve as a permanent home base/storage unit while living a nomadic lifestyle. He says in the email “I have a plan. More on that later,” but I have no idea to what he was referring.

While he was in DC, I stayed at Claremont and spent that semester working on the script for a film that could conceivably be shot for very little money (unlike Money, Hair, and Freedom, which was well beyond our means). I think we might have been better off with “Flummoxx,” but this one (Earth on Fire) was a mockumentary loosely based on the life of Jesus, but filled with ill-advised rants about generational conflict. Jos’ response to my description of the film:

Let us cast nothing but starving six foot tall Australian women. I think that they
will really capture the mood of Jesus.

Once he got back and read the script, he changed his view a little bit. I should probably explain a little bit about our writing process. Basically, I would write a script, which I was convinced was horrible. I’d be about ready to throw it out and start over, but I’d let Jos read it. He’d inevitably get very excited and exclaim that I was a genius, then proceed to rewrite every scene in some depth. I was not convinced that Earth on Fire should really move forward, but he was convinced it was a work of art. We spent a while going through the script to polish it (Jos was very picky about not repeating words and phrases – he referred to himself as “The Semantic Semitic”). Eventually, we had it in good enough shape to do some casting. I had convinced a coffee shop owner in Little Tokyo to let us use their shop, and we took out a casting notice in the Hollywood Reporter.

Jos and I were soon buried in head shots. Jos was predictably excited about the quantity of attractive women sending him pictures of themselves, and I was just kind of amazed that anyone wanted to be in a no budget film for no money. We put together a list of the promising looking actors (particularly any who were of indeterminate ethnicity – Jos and I were fond of “post-ethnic” casting), and Jos made some phonecalls.

I should probably point out here that Jos was serving a producer on this film in a fairly non-traditional fashion, mostly due to my attempt to get someone else to handle the “talking to strangers” aspect of filmmaking that I had no interest in whatsoever. He called agents, wrangled extras, attempted to procure us free food for the actors on shooting days (which failed), and whatever other human interaction was needed. I dealt with the technical aspects of the shoot (renting equipment, physical filming), but we both spent a lot of time working with the actors.

The actual production didn’t go well at all. We had planned to shoot the film over the course of four days, but we quickly realized everything we shot the first weekend was useless, due to too little tension on the film. The second weekend was actually worse, and I was ready to pull the plug on the whole thing. Jos managed to talk me out of that, and we agreed to film one final weekend, so that the actors would at least have something they could use for reels. We managed to regroup and shoot the entire thing in one weekend. It’s unwatchably bad, but we did finish it. As usual, I thought it was pretty lousy but Jos “was proud to have his name plastered all over it.” We decided our production company would be called Chucklehound Films. The name comes from a phrase Jos coined, but had no memory of whatsoever. One at least one occasion, Jos would burst into my room, finding myself and someone else laughing about something or other, about which he would demand, “What are you chuckling at, chuckle hounds?” As I said, he had no memory of this phrase, but I thought it was a great name for our venture.

That summer, after the two of us graduated, Jos headed back up to Northern California, while I stayed in Claremont. We emailed regularly to discuss movie ideas, though I think Jos preferred to talk on the phone (I can’t recall his exact phone number, but I do remember at one point he found a website that told you what your phone number spelled, so he started answering the phone as the Mac OS 8 help line). We bounced ideas around a lot, and he offered some feedback on some of the scripts I wrote on my own. Eventually, he decided we should make a short film based on some game theory idea he’d come across (I had thought it was based on the prisoner’s dilemma, but clearly, I was mistaken). We talked a bit about it over the phone, then he flew down for a weekend for what he called a “proof of concept.” He had been working at WebTV for a while at this point, so he’d started to get very enthusiastic about the dot-com way of thinking and talking.

I picked Jos up at LAX on a Friday night, and we got to work on the screenplay that weekend, breaking only for food (I recall a trip to the bakery in Claremont that triggered one of Jos’ favorite sayings – “it’s the fat that makes it good”) and a movie break (Knock Off, which included a picture-in-picture inset shot that excited both of us to no end). I wasn’t entirely enthusiastic about the script, but Jos thought we should move forward on shooting it. He planned to borrow a DV camera from a colleague, so I got in touch with Paige, the actress from Earth on Fire, and she agreed to do it.

Filming Held went even worse than Earth on Fire did. The lead actor didn’t know any of his lines, so we had to do dozens of takes while he stumbled through his bits. Jos and I were both pretty cranky by the end of the shoot, and I was happy to hand off editing of the film to Jos’ friend and coworker, Yun.

We continued to talk via emails and telephones after that. I had also gotten work at a dot-com, so we discussed our shared experiences in the late 90’s frenzy. Jos was incredibly excited about the prospect of micropayments, and, once he learned that I knew TCL, he was convinced we could build a revolutionary new technology. I was unconvinced, but game, even if I didn’t really understand why anyone would go through the bother of paying a penny here or there for content. He also mentioned he was working on a new film, but refused to tell me anything about it. He insisted he wanted me to be surprised when it went online.

Ten years ago today, I got a call from my friend and then-housemate Mike. He asked if I’d heard the news, but I had no idea what he was talking about. He told me Jos had collapsed at work from a heart attack and died. I don’t really remember what I said then. I know I managed to call my wife and tell her the news. She decided to drive out and pick me up from work. I remember sitting outside on the grass in front of the office waiting for her and crying.

Life carried on, as it does. I moved out east, got married, moved back to California, and eventually to Oregon. I kept working at dot-coms and tried to write, but found myself unable to finish anything. Without Jos’ constant encouragement, it was hard for me to believe anything I did was particularly worthwhile.

For years I was plagued by a recurring dream. I’d be doing something else, and I’d run into Jos. I’d try desperately to warn him about his heart condition, but he wouldn’t hear me or wouldn’t understand. These dreams continued until about three years ago. This dream was like the others, but, this time, after trying to warn Jos about his heart, he immediately dropped dead in front of me. Some people came out of a back room and explained to me that I needed to stop doing this, and that every time I tried to warn him, it pulled him away from where he was supposed to be. Since that night, the dreams have stopped, and I’ve been able to write again. I am not a very spiritual person, so I tend to regard this as my subconscious just deciding to smack me around a bit, but I know it’s helped ease the lingering sadness I feel every day since losing my friend.

For more on Jos, I recommend spending some time on this site maintained by his father.

I wanted to write something about our dog Kitchen, but I’m having a hard time coming up with the words to express how lucky I feel to have found her and been able to spend 12 years with her, and how empty our house feels without her in it. She passed away last Friday, and I still can’t believe that I can’t look over and see her staring at me, ready for her next walk.

We spent most of the day yesterday sitting in the basement, going through our photos. I’ve started scanning every picture of her I can find, which is slow going (since I’m scanning at the 9600 dpi), but I wanted to have a thorough archive. I’ve been putting all the pictures up at stunningpuppy.com, a domain name I registered years ago, without any idea of what to do with it. We came up with the name after a lady in Los Angeles pulled her car over to the side of the road to tell Eleanor, “What a stunning puppy!” She certainly was. I couldn’t have asked for a better companion.

It’s been quite a while since I did one of these. I’m actually up to the N’s, but I’ve been dragging my feet on putting up the J’s because I didn’t feel like I had enough really standout tracks to justify a post. Since I first went through the J’s, I’ve added quite a bit of stuff, so when back and found a few gems in the recently acquired stuff. Anyway, as usual, let me know if you liked anything.

Jilted John – Jilted John First off, any song containing the line “I was so upset, I cried all the way to the chip shop” is pretty much guaranteed to make one of these lists. This song is actually by Graham Fellows, who recorded the song in 1978. It hit #4 in the UK, and spawned some follow-up singles recorded by other people (“Gordon’s Not a Moron” by Gordon and Julie). There’s a whole Jilted John album (which is, somewhat stunningly, available on CD), which I haven’t yet heard, and Fellows has created a number of other fictional musicians for radio, TV, and film projects. Again, might be too “novelty” for some people, but I am a sucker for songs with a “two-free-four” before the chorus.

Judy Canova – Just Because Sticking with the songs about breakups, here’s one from 1958. Canova was pretty well past the height of her career at this point. Her radio show went off the air a few years before, and she wasn’t really making movies much, so was largely working on TV variety shows and Vegas. This song is pretty great and makes me wonder who the backup band is. There’s certainly a country/Western swing influence, but sort of sounds like it’s being played by a bunch of musicians who usually play dinner jazz. Anyway, Canova’s vocals are fantastic (particularly her enthusiastic laughing).

The Jackpots – Jack in the Box So this sounds a whole heck of a lot like “Got to Get You Into My Life,” which isn’t entirely a bad thing. I know virtually nothing about this band, except that they’re from Gothenburg, and that this song is recorded sometime between 1966 and 1968. Actually, after a few listens, I think I might like this better than “Got to Get You Into My Life.” I think it’s the falsetto. I love falsetto.

Duncan Browne – Journey Another one-hit wonder in the UK, “Journey” ended up tacked on the Duncan Browne’s second album. The whole album’s the same weird blend of late 60’s British troubadour folk with the 70’s rock, but “Journey” is the rightful hit. There are still moments in the song where I’m not entirely sure the two styles mix well together, but it ends up working pretty well for me.

Napoleon – Jimmy Joe I know absolutely nothing about this band. I’m guessing late 60’s and British, since it fits in really well with the rest of the orchestrated Anglocentric wimpy pop I usually listen to. It’s a children’s choir away from being able to pass as a part of Wirtz’ A Teenage Opera. I fully realize that is not likely to be a recommendation for most people reading this.