In my neverending quest for interesting music, I’ve downloaded a couple of (free & legal) mp3’s by the band Godspeed You Black Emperor. Wow. On first listen I am blown away. If you have high-speed access (or dialup and a lot of time), download these tracks and listen for yourself.
Their album entitled Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven is reviewed at Allmusic.com and Pitchforkmedia.
Via Scott McCloud: Time Magazine columnist Andrew D. Arnold presents a list of 25 “must-read” works of graphic literature from the last 25 years. I give enthusiastic endorsement to much of the list, but I balk at Our Cancer Year (a moving story, but not representative of Pekar’s best work, and the artwork in this one leaves me cold), The Golem’s Mighty Swing (pretty, but cheap baseball sentimentalism), and Flood (Drooker’s a great illustrator, but this word-less tale seemed kind of superficial to me). I am not crazy about From Hell, although I like much of Alan Moore’s other work. Why the heck isn’t Moore’s Watchmen on this list? Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns? Meh. Find Miller’s Batman: Year One, instead.
If you are only going to buy two of these works, I would recommend Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth and Stuck Rubber Baby, two very different but beautiful and powerfully affecting works.
Have you seen the trailer for the new movie Something’s Gotta Give? I really couldn’t tell you what it’s about, but I do know that it looks like a character played by Keanu Reeves (who is 40) dates a character played by Diane Keaton (who is 57). Oh, and Jack Nicholson (who is 66) is in the movie, too.
Two things really chafe me about the preview. First, you can tell it’s supposed to be surprising that a man Reeves’ age is interested in a woman Keaton’s age. Now how often have we been expected to swallow a movie in which an older male actor like, say, Michael Douglas (born in 1944) plays the husband of a younger female actor like, say, Gwyneth Paltrow (born in 1972)? Reverse the genders of the two leads, apparently, and Hollywood doesn’t think we’ll be able to handle it without “acknowledging” that such a pairing is hard to believe.
Second, there’s a “comic” scene in which Jack Nicholson’s character comes upon Diane Keaton’s character naked and is apparently so shocked by the sight of her 57-year-old body that he staggers backwards and runs into a wall. This is funny? This is believable? Now, if Keaton’s character came upon Nicholson naked and was disgusted, that I could believe. I mean, have you seen Jack Nicholson?
I had a very difficult, hour-long conversation with someone who’s known me my whole life, though I haven’t spent any significant time with him in person or on the phone in years and years. Alone on Thanksgiving, and after a few drinks, he decided to call me for company and solace. Hoo-boy. I think I felt full-strength doses of all the emotions in the human repertoire one by one, and I was drained after we were done.
So to get my mind onto something else, I took our out-of-town guest, L’s sister R, on a tour of Kansas City. We went to the City Market and walked out to take a look at the Missouri River and the work that’s just started on the Kansas City Riverfront Heritage Trail. We toured Columbus Park next, probably the most diverse neighborhood to be found here. Then we headed to the 18th and Vine district
(check out these pix from the Kc Public Library), home of the American Jazz Museum as well as the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, a place I suspect Chuck will want to see when he comes to visit. From there, we drove through the Crossroads District, home to many studios and galleries of artists in KC’s creative community, on the way to the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Community Christian Church; unfortunately, it’s not really anything all that exciting compared to the other Wright buildings I’ve seen. Finally, we rented a couple of videos from SRO Video: Eddie Izzard: Glorious, and Thunder Road.
Whew!
So how was your day?
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Just kidding. We don’t really eat tofurky. Here’s what we are eating. In addition to the aforementioned carrots and turnips, we’ll be having cranberry sauce; baked sweet potatoes stuffed with cranberries, pears, and pecans; green beans with dijon mustard and caramelized pecans (in this month’s Gourmet Magazine, not yet archived at Epicurious); bread dressing with dried apricots, pistachios, and mint; and bourbon-orange pecan pie with bourbon cream. I know, I know. The same old same old. But we thought we’d avoid anything too fancy this year. |
A Kansas City Thanksgiving tradition is the lighting ceremony at the Country Club Plaza. The following is what the Kansas City Star has to say about tonight’s shin-dig. (Typos recreated from the original for your amusement):
Plaza Lighting Ceremony Tonight
- Ceremony starts: 7 p.m. Gert there before 6 p.m.
- Switch is flipped: 7:30 p.m. by Kansas City’s own Kate Spade, New York fashion designer.
- Musical entertainment: A Broadway theme, including show tunes and holiday favorites, plus the Plaza Lights Orchestra. The stage is at Nichols Road and Wyandotte Street, near Mark Shale.
- What to expect: To be in a crowd of about 250,000, which is like three full Arrowhead Stadiums and then some.
- Where to watch From the street with the crowd — which is both exciting and slaustrophobic — or get a more panoramic view from the tops of the garages near Saks Fifth Avenue, Mark Shale and Halls.
I won’t be going because I tend to get slaustrophobic myself in large crowds. But I think we’ll check try to gert there tomorrow night after the hoo-ha has died down.