IRL

Thank you Waub for starting this tradition among our circle of now-extended friends 10 years ago.  Wow.  I’ve discovered so many great records (& more metal than a girl could ever dream of…) thanks to the initiative you took on that fateful day in Akron <3.

The real top ten, really (& I only cheated twice with double-entries):

1.  Feist – Metals:  Anyone who knows me a teeny bit won’t be surprised this is my top album. But it’s not pre-Monarch Feist bias at play, I swear.  This is a rich, dark record with challenging, complex & interesting percussive, vocal & melodic parts, which are completely different from the upbeat hand-clappy triple-a-radio stigma she suffered for the past six years. Not at all weirded out by her upcoming Mastodon collabo (what could be worse than LuLu, amirite?!?), it makes a lot of sense after listening to this (on repeat…for months on end).

2.  Singapore- do re mi fa q:  Not quite a full-length, but much more than an EP…& definitely a fair representation of what their live show yields. These (young!) guys shocked me with their polished presentation, unique sound (think a Nick Cave-fronted Strokes with a dash of Depeche Mode’s timeless sexy swagger) & smart songwriting. Hoping that 2012 brings big things for another ungoogleable band from Toronto. 3.  TIE:  Kate Bush- 50 Words for Snow & Director’s Cut:  Yeah, technically two different records but it’s nice to look at her songbook through a new lens, especially before tackling new material.  Listening to the director’s cut recordings of classic songs was almost as invigorating as last year’s Peter Gabriel covers record…& 50 Words will definitely help get you through the next two months & then some.

4.  Wilco – The Whole Love:  Would never self-identify as a big Wilco fan, cause it seems like a daunting chore…but this frigging record, with an almost prog-like churn, weird twists & turns & still catchy tuneful treats, has me revisiting all their old albums. This is one of those records that if you put it on during a dinner party you catch people pausing to enjoy it…or maybe I just throw really shitty dinner parties filled with awkward silences.

5.  Ryan Adams – Ashes & Fire:  My boy got me through a near-hellish fall/winter. I’ll admit to leaning on the standbys: Pneumonia, Gold, Heartbreaker…& all-time fav Easy Tiger. BUT this album is stand-alone GREAT. Funny reading in the reviews that he took 2 years off, cause there are delicious Sad Dracula/bootleg/one-off breadcrumbs all over the interwebs to satisfy any dry spell, but you can tell that my future husband/ex-Mr. Mandy Moore put in some serious time sequencing, mixing, writing a near-perfect country/roots album.
6.  Chilly Gonzales – The Unspeakable Chilly Gonzales:  There are no words to describe how amazingly meta this man has become. Oh & watch Ivory Tower or die laughing/trying.

7.  St. Vincent - Strange Mercy:  Everyone who wrote off her last two albums as too swirly, orchestral, busy & lush has run out of excuses. This is a fierce stripped down record where two things are glaringly obvious: bitch can shred & hot damn she has complete vocal range & control.

8.  TIE:  Thurston Moore – Demolished Thoughts & Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks – Mirror Traffic:  Combo slots on the list because of the common producer credit – Beck. Solid records for 90s icons on both sides of the studio glass. 9.  PJ Harvey - Let England Shake:  Spare me the Arab-Spring/political interpretation undergrad angst bullshit. This is a structurally sound trudge through the most painful moments in life, the inexplicable, the horrible & the terrifying. A tough slog, but somehow still beautiful. 10.  Bill Callahan - Apocalypse:  With his unique voice, folk tendencies &, well, a goofy approach to lyrics, I worry that a guy like this’ll get a ‘character actor’ stigma (I have more interesting things to worry about but it’s nice to switch it up). What can you do though, right? Wait 20 years & guys like Buscemi are revered as leading men…I trust that history will be equally kind to Mr. Callahan. At least in a big-payout-for-his-estate-Nick-Drake-level-of-reverence kind of way. (Watch “America” & it will all make sense)

Hello everyone!  I’m back from holiday travel (visiting family in the Pacific Northwest), and I’m *almost* through excavating the piles and piles and piles of stuff that came in when I was gone.  In an effort to get back on track, I’ll share just a few bullet points about things I learned over the past several days:

• It is possible to complete copy edits in three days, to meet a publisher’s unexpected deadline.  And to return them, on paper, even when the lines at the post office are more than 1.5 hours long.  Even after having sworn not to stand in those lines for the remainder of the year.  (FedEx to the rescue – a few more bucks, but much more sanity!)
• We no longer have “starfish” and “jellyfish” filling our oceans.  Instead, we have seastars, and jellies.  And any five-year-old in kindergarten will vehemently correct you if you use the old, outdated terms.  Corollary:  World energy shortages could be resolved if we could figure out how to harness the forces that drive five- and three-year-old boys.
• Too-short thumbs on photographer mittens can be fixed before gifts are given.  (And now it can be told:  the holiday knitted gifts were said photographer mittens, one pair of fingerless mitts, and a bulky cabled earwarmer/headband.)
• Purchasing raingear really does prevent rain (first, during our trip to Rome, now during our trip to the Pacific Northwest – during December, no less.)  Not to fear – it is pouring here today, and my raincoat helped keep me dry as I ran a jillion errands to fill our larder and get us back on track.
• Cross-country flights on Christmas Eve really can turn out to be the smoothest, least-problematic flights that one has ever taken.  (We returned home with *zero* flight delays, *zero* unscheduled stopovers in Midwest cities, *zero* lost luggage, and *zero* shuttle/taxi delays on the home end — for the first time in nearly five years of travel on this route!)

I’m sure that I’m missing lots and lots of stuff.  For now, though, I’ll just conclude that it was wonderful visiting with family, and it’s great to be home.  I’m looking forward to settling back into normal patterns for the new year!

Mindy, certain she’ll remember more must-be-posted items, as soon as she clicks on “publish”

Mirrored from Mindy Klasky, Author.

Might as well get these out of the way before the 2012 Mayan calendar apocalypse thing happens, too.  (Again, stalling, yes.)

Top five records in 2011 that were really good, but only in small doses (reasons outlined in handy parentheses):

1. Austra – Feel it Break (Shrill…Sorry, but it’s true.)
2. James Blake – s/t (Cold & melancholic, like a poorly curated pop-art exhibit soundtrack.)
3. tUnE-yArDs – whokill – (Too much, too busy, too piercing in its jangly-ness.)
4. K Flay – I Stopped Caring in ‘96 (Two words: white guilt.)
5. Raphael Saddiq – Stone Rollin’ (Too happy.)

Top five records I bought in Australia, still listen to on a regular basis, and secretly wish were released in 2011 because they’d have a fair shot at the real top ten:

1. Darren Sylvester – s/t (2008 – SERIOUSLY GET THIS. The Cars & T Rex honeymooned in Oz & this record appeared 9mos later.)
2. Tame Impala – Innerspeaker (2010 – Swirly psych without hippie dippy-tude, still nice & fuzzy around the edges. Sent it to all my Black Angels/WarPaint friends.)
3. Mystery Twin – s/t (2010 – So different than anything I’ve listened to in ages, great work-music, which isn’t to imply that it’s a total snoozefest, cause, it’s, ugh, just go listen.)
4. Angus & Julia Stone – Down the Way (2010 – a bit folk-twee, in a Felicity soundtrack kind of way, but not as cheesy as the godawful CD-ROM-flashback-website would have you believe.)
5. Cut Copy – Zonoscope (FastFact: this came out in 2011 but I had nowhere else to put it.)

Top ten records that I didn’t weigh fairly because I have it in my mind that they should be as great as the artist(s)’s previous LP, which is wrong:

1. Wild Flag – s/t (It’s hard to not expect more from this amalgamation of grrrl hrrros… REMINDER:  before you get angry, remember the intro about the total unfairness of this list)
2. Das Racist – Relax (Meh. Maybe it was their lackluster SX appearance…)
3. Tom Waits – Bad As Me (So so so good.  But still…)
4. Dan Mangan – Oh Fortune (‘Nice, Nice, Very Nice’ was TOO darn nice.)
5. Lykke Li – Wounded Rhymes (‘Little Bit’ less than what I’d hoped.)
6. The Roots – Undun (Solid…)
7. Black Keys – El Camino (Again, they set the bar SO high…)
8. Smith Westerns – Dye It Blonde (the NEXT record will be insane…right?)
9. Ian Kamau – One Day Soon (SO GOOD…but the mixtapes spoiled me.)
10. Fucked Up – David Comes to Life (concept albums, are, you know, um, tough to pull off…)

Faced with debilitating top-ten-list-related anxiety, I’m posting this to stall for a couple days.  It’s not just my indecisiveness that’s delaying the big one, but it’s too lovely to be at the house with my parents.  Hopefully we’ll all pare down screen time in 2012.  Life’s too short.

Apologies in advance if my choices offend…or you could just take this as a challenge to convince me otherwise:

Top ten 2011 records I seriously tried to like but can’t get into:

• Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues
• Joanna Newsom – What We Have Known
• M83 – Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming
• Gillian Welch – The Harrow & The Harvest
• Bon Iver – s/t
• Jay-Z & Kanye West – Watch the Throne
• Radiohead – King of Limbs
• Destroyer – Kaputt
• Drake – Take care
• The weeknd – all of them

Has it really come to this? Blogging once a frigging month! Wow, that is really bad. But I have been busy, really busy. Yesterday I went to a friend's Cookiepallooza cookie exchange, It's a great idea; you bring four dozen home-baked cookies and take home four dozen different cookies (minus any you eat there). And if I hadn't gone to that, I couldn't tell you about my friend's new site called Nook Lovers, which is, no surprise, for folks who like to read on the Barnes & Noble Nook.  Stephanie writes romance as well historical fiction and fantasy, and she's also into digital reading, so she decided to create this site to alert other Nook lovers about free and cheap ebooks for the Nook.

But that was just one weekend (and  didn't even make the cookies myself; my daughter made them for me). What other excuse could I have?



Well, we got new phones, Droid Bionics, and it took a while to learn to use them.  And then between work and the leaking shower (soon to be replaced in a total makeover of the entire bathroom), I have been swamped! In an effort to garner sympathy, I used my new phone to take a picture of the doomed wallpaper in my bathroom. If you know of a contest, feel free to nominate it for the world's ugliest. I have been looking at that wallpaper for over 20 years, so cut me some slack!

See you after Christmas, I promise! 

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One of the goals of thePeople is to satisfy Oakland’s taste for world class underground music – the stuff that cultural centers like London and New York are expected to have, but less cosmo spots like Pittsburg and Boise don’t usually get to see. This month’s special guest hits the [...]

I was at a cute, fun party last night (hosted by a lovely friend), and ended up crashing on someone's sofa. Come 4am, my body shut down like clockwork. This morning, I woke up at some obscenely early hour and let myself out. I walked around Pilsen, slightly disoriented and hoping that some route towards home would disclose itself (this involved hopping on the Halsted bus, then a convoluted series of transfers).

It was a great morning walk, calming and serene. A lot of Pilsen reminds me of Williamsburg, sadly. It is its own thing, and I liked looking at the churches, brick homes, art galleries, storefronts. There's still something old-timey about the neighborhood, even as it is in the process of being obliterated by gentrification.

But yay, I'm back home. I have to do laundry, work, some writing, some more walking. It was a nice start. I predict it's going to be a nice day.

I promised Jacob I'd write a blog post on food, so here goes.

There's one meal I eat alone, and that's #73 at a Vietnamese restaurant in my neighborhood (if you really want to know the name of my secret eating spot, DM me). The #73 is the grilled beef bun, which you could say is a rice noodle salad with julienned carrots, cucumber, mint, lettuce, bean sprouts, and crushed peanuts. It's topped off with a few slices of marinated grilled beef, and dressed with fish sauce. (You can also get versions with different types of meat, including shrimp, eggrolls, pork, etc.)

I've taken to eating this alone mostly b/c there aren't many non-Asian people who like this sort of thing. I know, b/c I've taken friends there and no one liked it. (Maybe it's the fish sauce with the red meat?) Also, over time as I've gotten used to living by myself again, I've come to enjoy eating this meal alone. It's very nutritious, and it makes me feel like I'm taking proper care of myself (even when I'm not).

The flavors are light, clean, summery — with just a bit of smokiness and charcoal leveling things off.

Visited the Modern Wing for the first time (well, aside from that botched crowded Thursday). It was calmer, less crowded, less of a clusterfuck. I caught this Felix Gonzalez Torres installation. Just as I was snapping pics, they raised the curtains, revealing Grant Park.

So all in all, this is my third time living in Chicago. I still love it. I don't think I can ever leave.

Crank up the vintage Le Tigre. Every day and night. Every day and ni-i-i-i-ght!
Lose 20 minutes reading blogs online.
Wash leftover dishes from last night.
Read some short story with a female first-person voice, the kind you're maybe a little ashamed of liking so much.
Do a face mask.
Your thighs look like dinosaurs. You don't have body-image issues. You have mom-hijacking-your-brain issues.
Start a short story. Something involving a life insurance policy.
Consider wearing a bra.
Take the brown line instead of the red for the longer walk to the office. You can stop in on Whole Foods on the way to work. Consider buying kombucha (that's healthy, right?). It all depends on whether the slight alcohol content is going to give you Asian glow this early in the morning.
Refer to yourself in the second person. You're not quite ready to face yourself yet.
Write this blog post. Then realize that all of this could have been summarized with a Cathy comic strip.