Black Is The New Blood

This should keep me occupied for some time. Sufjan Steven’s Avalanche is my most anticipated album of the year.

This is what this website looks like when run through the Websites As Graphs application.

via Neatorama

A friend told me today that she had started Cloud Atlas, and it made my day. The person in question is in for something special. Meanwhile, I’ve begun Number9Dream, the only David Mitchell book that I haven’t read. I’m only 20 pages in, but I feel like I have returned to an old friend. I could live a life in just these 20 pages, and I’d like to think that’s the best compliment you could ever give an author.

via Neatorama 

Is it a myth that the Post Office is closed on holidays? Why is it that I never get an email from Netflix on holidays, but Greencine got my returns and mailed out new discs for me today?

Not much new here, but still good to see.

I can go either way on Douglas Coupland, from the little I’ve read. I hated Generation X, but thought that Microserfs was charming. I’ve heard a lot of good things about his new book, Jpod, including this review in January Magazine.

Perec’s novel, A Void, which doesn’t use the vowel ‘E,” now has a companion. Now What mentions the forthcoming release of Christian Bok’s Eunoia, “which is only five chapters long but each chapter ONLY uses a single vowel.” I’m interested.

So this morning I was in that state that is half-asleep and half-awake, not really knowing if I was dreaming or not, when I thought I heard on the radio that Cate Blanchett was going to play Bob Dylan during his androgynous period. Surely I must have been dreaming.

Nope. The movie in question is I’m Not There. IMDB lists the plot outline as “Ruminations on the life of Bob Dylan, where seven characters embody a different aspect of the musician’s life and work.” Now I’m curious, as I see Richard Gere is also involved in the project and it is going to be directed by Todd Haynes.

Pi Pie

via Isochronal Probes
Originally uploaded by megpi.

Mitchell’s next book is going to be a historical novel about Dejima, a man-made island in Nagazaki harbor that served as a Dutch trading colony in the 1600’s.

He also talks to Popmatters this week.

A new band that I’m pretty hyped about, Rappers Delight Club, gets some love from the AP.

I have no interest in The Da Vinci Code. I read the first couple of pages once. It was so poorly written that my head boggled at how it had become so popular. Can anything that has sold 40 million copies be any good? Then I had a chuckle over the Pynchon joke from Gravity’s Rainbow….”For Demille, young fur-henchman can not be rowing.” (Or something like that…if you don’t get it, say it aloud and say it fast). I reaffirmed the fact that I am a literary snob of the highest order.

That said, this is pretty cool. Panoramas.dk presents a 360 degree virtual reality tour of some of the major sites mentioned in the novel. Quicktime is required, but worth the install if you don’t have it.

Be sure to check out the Mona Lisa panorama. I read that the Louvre had one million more visitors last year than the year before. This has mainly been attributed to the popularity of The Da Vinci Code, and is supported by the fact that there have been travel guides published that solely deal with the book. This figure is astonishing. It works out to an average of over 2,700 more visitors a day. Looking at the Mona Lisa Panorama, it looks like they are all there at once. Is it really worth seeing the Mona Lisa if you have to suffer through a throng like this?

[Update 1]:

My Friend, Ms. M, who has visited the Louvre more than once, before the publication of TDVC, tells me that at certain times of the year, crowds can throng pretty deep. She also confirms that the picture really is as small as it looks.

via Neatorama

Pinky’s Paperhaus has tipped me off to the forthcoming release of a new Mark Z. Danielewski novel, Only Revolutions. This is now my most highly anticipated read of the fall.

So, I got this bootleg DVD from Tamar’s “Beautiful, Loved, and Blessed” mini-tour. I had surgery back in March, and she was in Houston the night before my surgery. I seriously contemplated driving to Houston to see the show and then returning to Dallas and walking right in to surgery. Stupid idea, but gold like this doesn’t fall in your lap very often. I didn’t do that, but now I wish I had. Her guitar player can grind some serious axe. Like no one I’ve ever seen since that skinny muthafucka with the high voice. Oh wait….

Be sure to check out the Monsters Photoshopped into Fine Art contest.

via Boing Boing

Scott, over at Conversational Reading, and Ed, at Ed Champion’s Return Of The Relectant, have some interesting pieces on the whole New York Times Book Review’s Top 25 List.

This is what my apartment will look like when I move out.

via Neatorama

Includes Blurb by video creator Jym Davis:

Click on image.

This is my video for Sufjan Stevens song "Concerning The UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois" (the first track on his ... all » wonderful "Come On! Feel The Illinoise!" album). The video is primarily shot with a Fisher Price PXL 2000 Pixel-vision (a toy camera made in the '80s). This early digital format helped me achieve the ghostly grainy images. Besides shooting "live" footage with the PXL I also transfered "real" UFO footage to the camera (thus making the grainy UFO footage even worse!).

The sharper images are transfered stop-motion images taken by NASA on the planet Mars. I re-edited, tinted, and zoomed around the images to make them my own. I also had Bigfoot tape in the video but it got cut out! Maybe I will save that for a Radiohead song.

The video is my interpretation of Sufjan's beautiful song and I took inspiration from the mysterious and atmospheric lyrics. This video is very unofficial but if you would like a copy contact me at www.jymdavis.com. This video is not for sale but I would love to share it with other fans.

thanks, jym davis

lyrics: When the revenant came down, We couldn't imagine what it was. In the spirit of three stars. The alien thing that took its form. Then to Lebanon, oh God. The flashing at night, the sirens grow and grow.  «   / jym davis / 2 min 17 sec

As I wrote in my last post, The New York Times recently published their list of the 25 best works of American Ficiton in the last 25 years. Going by their list, you’d think that the best fiction of the last 25 years consists of a stack of books by Roth, Delillo, McCarthy, and Updike. I’d thought I’d chime in with my own list. I’m not necessarily saying these are the best books, but they are certainly my favorites.

1. William T. Vollmann -Fathers And Crows

No other work of fiction captured my imagination to the extent this did. Vast in it’s scope and learning, it’s a book I still return to every couple of years.

The rest, in alphabetical order:

2. Russell Banks - Cloudsplitter

3. John Barth - The Tidewater Tales

4. Donald Barthelme - 40 Stories

5. T.C. Boyle - Stories

6. T.C. Boyle - Water Music

7. Don Dellilo - Libra

8. Don Delillo - Underworld

9. Steve Erickson - Tours Of The Black Clock

10. William Gass - The Tunnel

11. William Gibson - Neuromancer

12. Mark Helprin - Winter’s Tale

13. Cormac McCarthy - Blood Meridian

14. Toni Morrison - Beloved

15. Tim O’Brien - The Things They Carried

16. Richard Powers - The Gold Bug Variations

17. Richard Powers - Galatea 2.2

18 . Thomas Pynchon - Mason & Dixon

19. Neal Stephenson - Cryptonomicon

20. Neal Stephenson - The Diamond Age

21. Neal Stephenson - Snow Crash

22. William T. Vollmann - The Butterfly Stories

23. William T. Vollmann - The Royal Family

24. David Foster Wallace - Infinite Jest

25. Colson Whitehead - John Henry Days