October 22, 2006
Hitting the big time, Vermont style ::
vermont — tagged farming, friends, old shaw farm and vermont
5:29 pm
It’s nice to see my friends Peter and Mary Ellen get some well-deserved attention from the local media. They do great work and are truly excellent people.
And what would your community service project look like? ::
legal — tagged boyscouts, copyright, legal, news and weird
4:45 pm
Only in LA. On Saturday, Slate’s Today’s Papers had this to say about a new merit badge being offered to Boy Scouts in Los Angeles (check the last paragraph of the story):
The LAT reports that Los Angeles-area Boy Scouts—perhaps those who would rather not learn the finer points of wilderness survival—can earn a new badge being offered in conjunction with the Motion Picture Association of America, the movie industry’s lobbying group. The “Respect Copyrights Activity” badge features the copyright “C” symbol, a film reel, and musical notes. A mom’s take: “This one is tailor-made for the city boy in L.A.” As long as the L.A. city boy is an aspiring studio hack.
Unfortunately, there was no link to the LA Times story when I last checked. I’d love some substantiation of this story, so if anyone knows of anything, send it along?
October 18, 2006
Fall Song List ::
music — tagged fall, favorites, indie rock, mixes, mixtapes, music and songlists
8:26 am
- Goin’ Against Your Mind, by Built to Spill: When I first heard this track on Built to Spill’s 2006 release You in Reverse I thought, hey these guys are back to their old form. Alas, the rest of the album is a little flat, so in the end I was disappointed. But it’s no matter, because this 8 minute track is stellar—a fast tempo and lots of different instruments going in different directions but still held in a cohesive whole. Plus Doug Marsh’s guitars always sound so solitary and haunting.
- Stuck Between Stations, by The Hold Steady: They’re one of the few bands I can think of whose albums have progressively, consistently gotten better over the past two years. This track particularly caught my attention because of the John Berryman reference (of course it makes sense, since he was a Twin Cities native). Craig Finn sings of Berryman’s suicide, and tells a story of Berryman’s conversation with the devil before jumping off the Washington Bridge. It’s a really great intellectual reference in the middle of a truly great indie rock anthem.
- Black Cab, by Jens Lekman: with two rocking tracks to start out, I thought I’d change up the tone a bit with Jens Lekman. I loved “Black Cab” when I first heard it sometime last year, and I’ve been looking for the right mix for it. So here it is. What is it that makes Jens’ music so great? It’s the underlying R&B sounds, of course!
- Ankle Injuries, by Fujiya and Miyagi: Not sure what it is, but electronica always follows well after Jens (see my previous mix). I picked up a couple of these guys’ tracks after reading a positive Pitchfork review of their album. Very simple melody laid over a nice, driving beat, with one of the musicians chanting, “Fujiya, Miyagi, Fujiya, Miyagi” over and over again. It’s a study in minimalism, I suppose, and it really works.
- Playhouses, by TV On The Radio: Oh, man, this song is great. It works well as a first track, or a great transition to get things moving again in the mix after slowing things up for a track or two. And as the song descends into its closing fuzz, the band sings with one of the most exhilirating cadences I’ve heard all year.
- I Feel Like Going Home, by Yo La Tengo: What a great album Yo La Tengo has come out with this year. I was a bit worried about them after they released Summer Sun (had they lost it?) but this one comes out and they’re back in full form. Here’s an exquisit, sad song with a solemn piano, female vocals and not much else. It gives me chills just thinking about it.
- Emergency, by Wilderness: This indie rock band from Baltimore was one of my great discoveries of the summer. The underlying music harkens back to Interpol, but the decidedly non-melodic chanting of the lead singer totally wrecks any meaningful reference to that band, or any larger school of music to which it might belong. The result is a sound that is at the same time familiar yet completely their own.
- Underneath the Waves, by The Twilight Singers: When I was a teenager, The Afghan Whigs were one of my agnst bands. Now the Twilight Singers come along, and while they use the same formula—that is, tight verses combined with really strong choruses—and create a sound that is similarly cathartic but a little more restrained. So it produces the same emotional reaction, but appeals to my more adult sensibilities.
- St. Rosa and the Swallows, by The Thermals: See my previous post on The Thermals and you’ll see why I put one of their tracks here. How could I not include them?
- Favours for Favours, by The Futureheads: I always liked these guys, but I fell in love with them at Pitchfork. This song, off their 2006 release, particularly caught my attention because of its subjectmatter—trying to get some gal’s attention. It’s a theme that has been all but completely played out in indie rock, but with their sense of melody and optimism, The Futureheads are able new and exciting.
- Eyed Eyes Eye, by Conner: They’re a young band out of Lawrence, Kansas. And they have a punk-rock sound tinged with traditional rock and roll sensibilities. There’s something very Exile-on-Mainstreet-esque about this track, and about their album generally. Although the song by no means reaches the heights of Exile, the band nonetheless has a lot of potential for indie rock greatness, and I think that comes through with this hard-driving little rocker.
- Requiem, by M. Ward: A touching in-memoriam of a truly great person who may or may not have actually existed. Whether or not he did, I feel bad that I never had an opportunity to meet the man to whom this song is dedicated. M. Ward has the unique ability to sing songs that really make you feel what he’s talking about. He’s a lot like Tom Waits in that regard, though Ward is a bit more melodic about it.
- Pancho, by Tortoise (featuring Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy): Tortoise and BPB got together and produced an album of unrecognizeable cover songs that overall was pretty eh. But this song is really great—there’s lots of opportunities for irony and sarcastic commentary, but Will Oldham sings it with the upmost sincerity.
- Sons and Daughters, by The Decemberists: I’ve been warming up to the Decemberists’ latest over the past few weeks. When I first heard it, I thought it sounded a bit too, I don’t know, Steely Dan? But now I realize that it’s more like the band is reaching for a newer, heightened form of their sound. I can’t fault them for that, definitely. And this song, which is the album’s last track, calls to mind the underlying optimism of wanting to escape from your life—not because you want to run away from what you have, but because you want something better.
- You Gotta Feel It, by Spoon: Where did this song come from? I’ve had Kill the Moonlight since it came out in 2002, but I didn’t notice how great this song was until just recently. Great horns section, plus a really catchy, minimalist piano line that comes in sometime in the second verse. And at just about a minute and a half, it’s a perfect closer.
October 13, 2006
Jesus Christ made Seattle under protest ::
music — tagged kexp, mnemonics, music, seattle and the mellors
11:08 am
By way of the KEXP song of the day podcast comes the song Jesus Christ Made Seattle Under Protest by the Mellors. For anyone who’s spent any time in Seattle, this mnemonic has a special meaning, referring to the 12 East-West roads that lead from the city to the Puget Sound. Starting from the South and moving North, those streets are: Jefferson, James, Cherry, Columbia, Marion, Madison, Spring, Seneca, University, Union, Pike and Pine (Google map, with Jefferson starting just North of Yesler Way). It’s funny, I hadn’t thought of that fun little memory device for quite some time, until I saw the song downloading this morning. I suddenly recalled my many Seattle experiences between December, 2001 and August, 2003, and for a moment there I really longed for that city.
October 12, 2006
The Thermals: The Body, the Blood, the Machine ::
music — tagged indie rock, music, politics, post punk, subpop and the thermals
4:07 pm
There’s a certain point at which I listen to an album enough and it goes from being something I just generically sort of enjoy to something something more distinguished and profound. It’s at that point I realize that I’ve liked this album not because of some catchy hook or some set of impassioned screaming, but because I’m somehow connected to the music they’re playing on a more fundamental level.
This happened today. On their new album The Body, the Blood, the Machine, The Thermals speak to me (or scream at me) in a way that I’ve been wanting a band to for a few years now. Part political commentary, part impassioned (though oblique) love story, the songs never drift too far into one subject or the other, but rather stick right in between the two, both sides pulling against them and adding even more to the tension. The end result is a set of ten songs emblazoned in my mind, which I find myself thinking about—or outright singing—at any given time during the day. (Yeah, you can picture me biking through Montpelier singing “A Pillar of Salt” to myself.)
Part of it, I am sure, is that I’ve been through a set of pretty substantial changes since I bought this album. I picked it up on the day it was released from New World Record, the hipster record store up the street from my parents’ house in Buffalo. I had to harass the clerk to dig the album out of Sub Pop’s box, he had yet to even enter the disc into the store’s database by the time I’d bought it. From there the CD when right into my car’s player, where it’s been ever since. It’s become one of the few albums I’ll listen to straight through, the volume creeping up from medium-loud to close-to-deafening by closing feedback of the last track. All the while I’m listening I’ll think about having graduated from law school (thus losing the structure on which I’d come to depend for the past three years), having taken the bar, having passed the bar, having moved my life up to Montpelier, and generally feeling somewhat confused at how my life could simultaneously have so much direction yet at the same time no direction at all. All of this is happening in a political year, with an increasingly unpopular President focussed on a painfully unpopular and wrong-headed war, with the economy flatlining and building tensions in throughout the Middle East and now in North Korea. Meanwhile all of our elected leaders seem to want to ignore these problems and protect themselves. The outrage at this injustice is palpable. It’s that strange contrast of personal emotion and political awareness that I think first attracted me to this album and has, I now confess, made me fall in love with it.
In any event, I can say in retrospect why I love this album, but it’s impossible for me to predict which bands are going to be a taste-of-the-month and which ones are really going to endure. If I knew what it was about these albums that gives them such staying power, I would probably be much better at selecting music I know I would actually like over the long term, and would likely save a lot of money. But then, if the system were more predictable it wouldn’t be music or art that I was immersing myself in—it would be science or law or something else that would be a lot more boring and much less meaningful.
October 10, 2006
Review: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke ::
books — tagged alternate history, books, fantasy, magic and susanna clarke
9:28 am
Some books launch a thousand other media projects, and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is one of those books. Since Jonathan Strange’s release in September, 2004, there has been a fan club, a movie deal, and a second book of stories by Susanna Clarke, which is scheduled for release in, hey, just a few days now. Coming in at just about 800 pages, Jonathan Strange deserves much of the acclaim it has received. But on the other hand, for all its density, imagination, intricate, interrlated subplots and characters, the book lacked an real sense of deep character, authentic emotion or social commentary that would otherwise connect a reader to what was happening in the story. So ultimately, while the book was a great read, it was not, unfortunately, a truly great novel.
So, for the unitiated, here’s the background: Mr Norrell is an old curmudgeon of a magician, whiling away his early 19th Century life of privilege in his library at a creepy old abbey, where he practices magic and shares it with no one. Then one day a society of non-practicing magicians (called “theoretical magicians” in the book) discover Mr. Norrell, and are astounded by his abilities. Soon Mr. Norrell moves his project to London, where he hopes to aid the British government in the Napoleonic Wars. He finds some success through his efforts, and eventually gains the patronage of a government minister after raising the minister’s bride-to-be from the dead. Then one day a second practical magician, (you guessed it) Jonathan Strange comes in. Though odd-looking, he is everything Mr. Norrell isn’t—young, dashing, open about his abilities and, much to Norrell’s consternation, very liberal about exposing the general public to magical knowledge. Mr. Norrell takes Strange on as a pupil, and it is clear early on that Strange’s abilities far outpace his teacher’s. The ensuing tension between the two heroes becomes the fundamental plot dynamic for the rest of the book, and at that point we’re only about a third of the way through it. So needless to say, we have a long way to go, so there should be something worthwhile to fill up those pages.
And as I mentioned already, there is quite a bit to fill up those pages. The book is impeccably well-thought out, and there are some truly excellent references to historical figures. Those fine touches give the reader an odd feeling, like you’re watching the Clarke’s alternate history brush up against our own and, like a character in Jonathan Strange who might at one point stumble across one of the Fairy Roads, you get the feeling that you’ve found something that had always been there, hidden in plain sight. But at the end of it all, none of the characters really stand out or distinguish themselves. Rather, they all use much of the same stock language to describe a set of very simple, almost juvenile emotions (e.g., he was sad when his new wife died, frustrated when the spell didn’t work, fearful of the growing cloud of ravens coming his way, etc.). So you don’t see emotion, you just have to take the characters at their word that they’re feeling something. Maybe that’s the author’s point, but if it is, I’m not exactly clear on what she might be getting at, or why emotional flatness is so significant.
I’m maybe being a little too tough on Susanna Clarke. I should temper my criticisms with the reality that there is no chance I could ever pull off a book like this, even if given the rest of my life to try. At the end of those nearly 800 pages, Jonathan Strange was a big, complicated book, but it was also clearly a first book, and one that misses many of the nuances that it takes time to both see and express as an author. It will be interesting to see where Susanna Clarke goes from here. And like I mentioned already, we’ll find out when her new book comes out on October 16th.
October 9, 2006
Project Posner ::
legal — tagged judges, legal, public domain and tech
10:00 am
Reading Boing Boing this morning, I came across a post about Project Posner, a searchable database of all of Judge Posner’s opinions dating back to when he first started his job at the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals back in 1981. According to the site’s About page:
While Posner’s books and popular writings are easily available to the public, his opinions are difficult or expensive for the public to access, let alone search. This site, for the first time, collects almost all of his opinions in a single searchable and easily readable database.
So it has just as much to do with freely accessible information as it does with legal geekery. My kind of site!
But in all seriousness, Judge Posner is one of the few icons out there whose ideas I find off the wall and crazy (remember that time he tried to apply his Law and Economics theory to criminal law?) but whose opinions I deeply respect. Plus he exudes a confidence in his legal writing that I can only hope to one day begin to approach.
October 8, 2006
Sunday morning news blogging ::
politics — tagged congress, environment, legal, newsblogging, politics and sustainability
11:08 am
Now that I live without a television, my Sunday mornings are usually spent reading news sources and political blogs rather than idly worshipping the institution of Sunday morning punditry. So with that, let me start what I hope to be an ongoing tradition here at The Pages Within: Sunday morning news blogging. With that, two interesting articles worthy of reading.
The first is an LA Times piece on the products allowed into US markets that other countries ban. At the top of the list is Chinese-produced plywood coated in formaldehyde, which incidentally the Chinese government has banned in its own country. The lack of regulation in the US, however, has created two separate camps of corporations—one that is self-regulating, and the other that chooses to take advantage of the lack of health regulations in this country. The self-regulating companies instead “comply with EU standards, the most stringent chemical laws in the world.”
“We don’t operate to different standards in different parts of the globe, regardless of differing environmental standards,” said John Frey, manager of corporate environmental strategies at Palo Alto-based Hewlett-Packard.
Those companies that choose to adhere only to the minimal US regulations have a predictable argument:
[T]heir products have undergone rigorous reviews in the United States and are not only legal here but safe. They say some governments, particularly the EU, have overreacted and banned chemicals with little or no evidence of a human health threat.
Similar to this case, his book Collapse Jared Diamond contrasts the business practices of two oil companies, and talks about how one company—Chevron—discovered it was better to self-regulate, setting the bar higher than the law necessarily requires, both because taking precautions is always cheaper than dealing with a disaster, and because, like it or not, the tendency of government is to implement more stringent health and safety requirements. So it’s good to be ready for it.
The second article is a slightly more self-explanatory piece in Slate about Congress’ use of the language of addiction. You might not have thought that the Foley scandal and the passage of the (likely unconstitutional) detainee bill are related, but apparently they are.
Cornell Law to help with Donald Fell appeal ::
legal — tagged capital punishment, crime, donald fell, legal and vermont
9:05 am
Back in the summer of 2005, I was posting pretty regularly on the Donald Fell capital trial. It was, for those who remember it, a big deal around here because capital punishment is rarely used in any of the Northeastern states, and because although Vermont doesn’t have a death penalty statute, the federal statute is still available for federal crimes. With that said, I found this AP piece about the law students at Cornell helping with Fell’s appeal.
New about ::
meta — tagged meta and personal
8:58 am
Something I’ve never been very good at: talking in an open-ended way about myself. Nonetheless, the about page for this site was in severe need of updating (it’d been more than two years since the last!) so I posted this. I found the exercise valuable, though, because it gave me a real sense of how much things have changed since June, 2004.
October 6, 2006
Post Punk Rock Show, 1990 ::
photos — tagged 1990s, milwaukee, music, narrative, photos and the unicorn
8:20 pm
Post Punk Rock Show, 1990
Originally uploaded by Quicksand2005.
I don’t know anyone in this shot, but I do know where it was taken. It was the parking lot of the Unicorn, one of the coolest punk clubs in Milwaukee in the early 1990’s. As I mention in the photo’s comments, I grew up going to shows there.
What’s funny is that those shows seem like such a long time ago—it’s almost like I dreamed them. So it’s good to know there are other people out there who shared the experience, even if I don’t know them.
October 5, 2006
Music reviews: Pointing out the obvious ::
music — tagged daytrotter, music, pitchfork, reviews and thekillers
11:03 am
First, Pitchfork leads its review of the Killers’ new album by noting the band has altered its sound “from the Cure and 1980s UK new wave to Bruce Springsteen and 1970s earnest U.S. classic rock.” Then Daytrotter asks (in its headline no less), “Who Are All These People Saying This Album Sounds Like The Boss?” Does this mean that the two reviews cancel each other out and I don’t have to read either of them?
October 3, 2006
Yes, enough said ::
legal photos — tagged legal photos
1:17 pm
enough said?
Originally uploaded by bethboya.
It’s been a while since I posted a legal photo, so I think it’s time to reinvigorate this section of the site.
October 2, 2006
On this quiet morning, you can almost hear the gavel bang ::
legal — tagged abortion, books, equalprotection, legal, politics and SCOTUS
8:07 am
Well, not literally, because according to the Supreme Court calendar oral arguments don’t start up until tomorrow morning. (Which is actually good news because it will give me a chance to catch up on some of the more interesting cases that the court will be hearing this term.) And as Linda Greenhouse notes in this piece in the NY Times, the court will hear some very important cases this term—namely ones dealing with Congress’ Partial Birth Abortion Ban and two schools’ efforts to acheive racial integration in their schools. My take on the two consolidated cases, distilled into one (long) sentence: It’s hard to tell how the abortion cases (summaries here and here) will turn out; however, if the two school integration cases (summaries here and here) wind up standing it may be for the wrong reasons—that is, local control—and not the right ones—i.e., a more honest application of Equal Protection that has less to do with absolute race blindness and more to do with achieving racial equality after hundreds of years of slavery, segregation, and all the disparities that come with them.
With the oncoming October term, our minds should also turn to the thoughts of fun legal reading. And to fill that mental need comes this 600+ page tome on the life of many a liberal lawyer’s hero, Justice Earl Warren. Apparently, far from painting Warren as a standards-bearer for liberal legal causes, Justice for All: Earl Warren and the Nation He Made doesn’t shy away from the type of figure Warren cut before he made it onto the court:
...Warren was an almost stereotypical Republican before joining the high court. As Jim Newton reveals in his meticulously researched and well-told new biography, “Justice for All,” Warren was a zealous prosecutor, passionately anti-Communist, pro-business, anti-New Deal, anti-gambling, anti-pornography, tough on crime (his father was murdered in their Bakersfield home in 1938), and he favored interning California’s Japanese and their American-born children after Pearl Harbor.
How interesting! One assertion I made in the past was that it was precisely because Republicans of the 1950’s had no political ties to Southern segregationists that they had the freedom to act as both their conscience and the Constitution required them to. Based on the review, it sounds that Warren’s actions once he got on the court were quite consistent with that. But we’ll see what I think after I read the book.
October 1, 2006
A serious downside to judicial elections ::
legal — tagged judges, legal and politics
8:55 am
There are some things you never want to hear a judge—much less a state supreme court justice—utter. I think this line takes it:
Even sitting justices have started to question the current system. “I never felt so much like a hooker down by the bus station in any race I’ve ever been in as I did in a judicial race,” said Justice Paul E. Pfeifer, a Republican member of the Ohio Supreme Court. “Everyone interested in contributing has very specific interests.”
From the New York Times: Campaign Cash Mirrors a High Court’s Rulings.
