Wednesday 09.28.2011 | 10:23 PM EDT

Elegy for Jesse: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

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“Song For Jesse” | Nick Cave & Warren Ellis | Official Soundtrack | 2007

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Earlier lamented, it’s been a while since I finished a book. Started half a dozen, each eventually laying fallow on shelves and tables, ponds briefly tested by tentative toes. Steinbeck, Murakami, McInerny, Ellis, Capote – in the previous year, these authors had ruined my interest in other stories, imposed a restlessness with narrative that lasted up till now.

During the heavy rains that plagued Brooklyn’s summer months, my window sill, serving as one of many shelves around the apartment, sprung a leak, soaking through my volume of Jesse James. I proclaimed it a wash, nearly tossing it for trash, then reconsidered. Over a few days I fanned its damp brown pages until its limp leaves once again regained a now warped rigidity. Pre-soak, I’d chipped away at less than a fourth of its weight, but my volume’s early pages were inked with annotations and underlines that convinced me this was the right book, at the right time. Upon finally drying, my copy took on the tactile quality of a weathered keepsake, dilapidated but still very much intact. It was light yet substantial in my hands, it’s spine pliable, it’s curled edges making them easier to turn. I found my place and began again…

Robert Hansen’s book is a keenly imagined, historically accurate account of the assassination of celebrity outlaw Jesse Woodson James, known across the American west and beyond as a man both notorious and revered; ruthless yet genial. A man of almost preternatural energy and cunning that captured the imagination of scores of his contemporaries. It’s unnecessary to recapitulate the story of his legend and downfall here. What’s remarkable about this book is the language – a narrative of tattered, stately, old-fashioned language made musical with solemnity and lyricism. I’ve never looked up so many words in my life. Beguiling words: furbelow, stentorian, bungey, perfidy, bivouac. Words lending anachronistic spice to sentences so finely crafted you actually, really do go back and read them again. And again. This book reminded me of why I read books in the first place.

I was apprised of the novel by the movie of the same name, a faithful adaptation that boasted finely nuanced acting, a superb script and the always stunning cinematography of Roger Deakins, who that year was nominated twice as Best Cinematographer, once for Jesse James and again for No Country For Old Men. (Old Men won). But thankfully, the film is not just an exercise in style and visual beauty – the script wisely inserts verbatim snatches of language into its narrative and invents new scenes and dialogue so true to the tone and language of the book, you’d think the author himself had scripted it.

“His thoughts glanced away from ensnarements like minnows… His nose…not long or preponderant, no proboscis, but upturned a little and puttied, a puckish, low-born nose, the ruin, he thought, of his otherwise gallantly handsome countenance…[He] let his fancies run like red-eyed ferrets, letting the experienced air educate his senses. … He also had a condition that was referred to as “granulated eyelids” and it caused him to blink more than usual as if he found creation slightly more than he could accept.”

Need I say more? Go pick up a copy. It and the hauntingly beautiful soundtrack by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. The two fit together like a bullet in a chamber.

Wednesday 03.23.2011 | 6:53 PM EDT

Weather Report, Part Deux: Hails Bells

Well, at least things are getting a little more exciting, with a five minute hail shower, drops the size of frozen peas.

Now thunder, lightning and light snow. It’s Weather’s Greatest Hits…

Get your hail on:

“Hell’s Bells” | AC/DC

Wednesday 03.23.2011 | 3:23 PM EDT

Weather Report: Shitty

iPhone 4G + CameraBag

After a couple of glorious spring teases this weekend, Brooklyn’s back to its typical “wintry mix” of snow, rain, wind and cold. There should be a simpler meteorological term for this kind of day: Shitty. Perfect for a long, gloomy record from the late 80′s as I spin Disintegration on repeat all day long. At least my wall’s not leaking any more.

Enjoy the misery, friends. It will soon be over…

“Same Deep Water as You” | The Cure

Thursday 03.17.2011 | 12:23 AM EDT

Coming Soonish: NYC At Your Feet

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Well, I’ve been talking about it for almost 10 years, but it seems I’ve finally got my ass in gear.
And thus begins the early campaign for a decade’s worth of from-the-hip, below the waist photo treats going public in print and digital this spring. And by public I mean anyone who stumbles across maunet or happens to be friend or family enough for the book to bear out as gift or purchase. And by spring I mean probably early summer. You see, with the help of the good folks at blurb.com, this is a self-published affair. Voyeuristic, narcissistic – what’s the difference…

“Walk On The Wild Side” | Lou Reed

From the introduction:

The idea for this book began taking shape in October 1999 upon moving to New York City,
a town renowned equally for it’s eclectic style and harshness of character.

A place where, generally, we don’t make eye contact.

Sitting in a subway car, we follow protocol. Hunched against the winter wind,
our gaze drops to the ground beneath our feet. Our field of vision is self-limited
to that narrow frame between the pockmarked sidewalk and the waistlines of
our fellow New Yorkers. Through this lens we gather our first concrete observations,
draw initial conclusions about the kind of person passing by us might be.
Where they dine. Where they dance. Where they work and play.

Ok, so it needs some work. That’s what I’m doing. I’ve made enough contact prints to paper the wall of my apartment. Becca Black and Brady Spud have graciously helped me edit down from 500 shots to a mere 50 spreads celebrating the fashion foot. Building the layout’s a bitch. Sequencing it ain’t nothin’ like making a mix tape. Ok, something like it, but, um, harder. And there’s this whole InDesign thing, which quite unlike Photoshop, makes me feel small and stupid.

But it’s well on its way. Check back soon-ish.

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Friday 03.11.2011 | 12:23 PM EDT

Weather Report: Torrents and Leaks

iPhone 4G + CameraBag

“Whiskey & Water” | Tindersticks

It’s 11:30PM and I’ve been dicking off upstairs all night, sipping whiskey, making prints and listening to fresh 180 gram vinyl. It’s an hours-long downpour outside, winds wipping grape-size raindrops hard against the window panes.

I head finally downstairs, presumably to bed, where I’ll pick back up on the early pages of The Brothers Karamazov, a daunting read I feel compelled to attempt for hope of some rich reward. I put out lights one by one before noticing a triad trickle of water snaking its way down the long loft wall. A lateral beam has cracked the drywall, an ironic misnomer as streaks of water inch steadily towards the floor. Seems the Brothers will have to wait.

Wiping the wall with a towel, I ponder how to patch the levee, lest it break. Duct tape. Duct tape fixes anything. But not even several layers of rugged silver adhesive stems the trickling tide. I haul out the iron WWII munitions case that houses sundry household hardware: wood saw and ratchet set; filament, twine, pliers and wire; hammers; wrenches; nails, fasteners, screws and bolts of infinite variety. Alas, no spackle, no blade. Where the hell is that? Ah, but here we go: caulk and caulking gun. Manly.

After a puzzled minute or two I manage to load the phallic plastic tube into its steel housing. Locked and loaded, I feel competent and self assured. Who needs a landlord when you’re so well equipped? I snip the tip and squeeze, expecting the orderly clean line of sealant to conform neatly to the long cracked line of wet flaking paint and drywall. Nothing. Squeeze as I might, I cannot coax a drop. Snip and squeeze again. Nothing. Seems the unused tube has lain fallow too long in that old munitions box, dried up solid as granite. Tindersticks sings “Whiskey & Water” as I defeatedly return the tools to their heavy metal home, resolved to the forces of nature, watching helplessly as the injured wall cracks, streaks and peels into the night.

iPhone 4G + CameraBag

Tuesday 12.07.2010 | 4:23 PM EDT

Cruel and Perfect Timing: The Antler’s Hospice

Strange how some records seem to find you at just the right moment.

The Antler’s Hospice has been sitting on my digital shelf for over a year, neglected under the gigabyte shadow of record stacks waiting to be absorbed, appreciated or discarded. For no fathomable reason, I recently popped it on to discover a musically exhilarating, emotionally devastating record, it’s late debut on my musical landscape posing an eery, ghostly timeliness.

Metaphorical, allegorical, auto-biographical–this concept record is all of those things; a crushing story of slowly slipping loss, mounting grief and reluctant relief. Piercing, ferocious and delicate, it painfully serves as comfort and thorn to those in need of one and vulnerable to the other .

Life is strange, time is a prophet and everyday is just one more chance to purge your grief until you are tenuously convinced: you may in fact come out the other side, almost whole and dimly ready to live again.

Kettering

Pitchfork Media: “Best New Music” and  37th best album of 2009
NPR Music: #1 record of 2009

Friday 12.03.2010 | 10:23 AM EDT

Discography Divorce: You Can Have All The
Billy Joels. Except The Stranger

Alec: I’m sick
Leslie: What’s wrong?
Alec: Just sickness

For many that came of age in the 80′s, a double-feature both scathing and saccharine ran concurrently in our teenage minds. Each spoke directly to our youth’s romantic angst. The first, The Breakfast Club, is unassailable by any critic worth his salt. The second, not so much. But still, it presents a scene so well conceived, so close to the bone, that the squeamishly sentimental St. Elmo’s Fire squats permanently in the minds of broken-hearted record geeks everywhere.

Annie Hall wrote her name inside her books so Alvy couldn’t claim them as his own. In the Age of Digital, division of real estate (at least where pop records are concerned) is a relative non-issue. Each party gets it all: the Billy Joels, the Carly Simons, and any other shmaltzy crap you may have guiltily romanticized while making hip, critically astute proclamations about Post-Punk’s influence on bands borne of the new millennium.

Breaking up is hard to do. But in this rare case, everyone wins the record collection negotiations. Unless you happen to be a vindictive dick or a cold-hearted a bitch from hell. Alec and Leslie may have been. Annie and Alvy were not.

Thankfully, neither are we.

Ahoy St. Elmo, patron saint of sailors.