somehow this is supposed to make up for my last post.

omg.
Ew.

We'll not go into exactly why I was doing this, but I was listening to a drive-home radio show this afternoon. They had some kind of contest where some guy called in, Jonathan Davis was there, one of the DJ's was helping (maybe?), and one was asking questions. The category was literature. The task:
Name the Author

My quiz is infinitely more difficult than the radio quiz. (spelling and capitalization count!) Good luck.

Name the Author
Clockwork Orange
1984
Brave New World
On the Road
Slaughterhouse V
Show Answers

So the guy who called in got 1 correct. And they were complaining so much about how difficult the questions were and blah blah blah...
The other DJ (Jack Daniel) now had to answer the same questions to try and win. He also got one correct.
They both got the 1984 question correct...
Initially I was all proud b/c I knew them all. Now I just feel gross.

Labels: Books

Dave Eggers at the Novella Festival
I first became aware of the Novella Festival of Reading in 2003 when I saw that Neil Gaiman was coming to town. Got the tickets, and I was on my way to see him read for the 2nd time. I guess I was kind of an insensitive douche at dinner tho when I said something mean about little kids. Or something like that. Regardless. I ended up going by myself just in time to see Neil walking back across the street from the Smelly Cat coffee shop signalling the end of the reading and the beginning of the signing. I could have gone in, I suppose, but I didn't. I dunno... I just didn't. But this time... I saw that Dave Eggers would be speaking, and I didn't want to miss it. I'd only read his first novel, but I really really liked it. (Thanks, Scott... and Cindy?) Before going I picked up his most recent as well as How We Are Hungry. I planned to read at least one before the signing, but I am lazy. Or just easily distracted. So, of course, nothing was read by me.
I imagine it's true with everyone about most everything... I always seem to believe that I am the average demographic for people who like the things that I like. So I was pretty surprised and amused tonight when a vast majority of the people filing in were substantially older than me. Grandparents old. I have a difficult time believing that more old people than young people identify with and enjoy A Heartbreaking Work... Having gotten partially through What is the What, I can see why Eggers would also appeal to an older crowd. Or, as Allison suggested, perhaps these were just people who were attending most or all of the Novello events. Of course, that's neither here nor there. So Dave came out a little bit late looking... more or less... like I thought he would (should?). It was great fun to watch him stand there. In lots of ways it was like I was looking at myself. He's so freaking fidgety and nervous looking; I feel like I used to do that when I used to have to stand on stage and say things to people in school or whatever. Luckily for everyone that doesn't happen anymore. Once, in middle school, I got in trouble for refusing to lead the assembly in the Pledge of Allegiance. Eventually they made me do it tho. I started with the Calvin and Hobbes version of "I pledge allegiance to Queen Frag and her mighty state of hysteria." Then I just stood there. Fucking assholes. I do not know why I remember that... nor why I decided to share it now. sdlkgjasdlkg. So, Dave. This thing occurred the weekend for Halloween partying in downtown Charlotte. While Dave was talking there was this incessant thumping in the background. Turns out that there was a huge Halloween party right across the street from the auditorium. Lots of near naked people running around getting drunk. And here we are listening to an author talk about Sudan. I'm only minorly bitter about my lack of desire to lose my inhibitions and do crazy "fun" stuff with lots of other random people. None of this seemed to bother anyone else tho, so that's good. Although, between the techno-fly bass drums and Dave twisting the cap to his Coke on and off and on and off in the microphone, it was kind of like being at a rave. Except without the glo-sticks and dancing. And drugs. And lights. Actually it wasn't like being at a rave at all. It was like being in school again. Which, oddly, was really awesome. This most recent book (What is the What) was so very obviously his current pride-and-joy. It was really cool to see how happy and excited he was about this thing. Especially when compared to how self-deprecating he was regarding Heartbreaking Work... The "lecture" portion of the talk ended up being Dave mostly telling the story of how it came to be that he was the author of this book. Much like HWoSG is fictionally auto-biographical, WitW is fictionally biographical. I don't know if Dave would agree with me or not, but (I am now halfway through the book since I first began writing this post) the two books seem very stylistically similar to me. Both are written from a first-person perspective and both attempt to stay historically accurate in a general sense while being aware that the details are often lost to time and, therefore, imagined by the author. The most interesting story, I thought, was how he actually arrived at the decision to write the book this way. There was a phone call that initially put Achak (who is the main character in WitW) in touch with Dave, which led to meetings, which led to him accepting the job. Having been trained as a journalist, he initially approached the task as a journalist. As an outside observer attempting to tell history. After two years of frustration, he said that his excitement for the project had waned b/c he just couldn't make the story work with this stylistic choice. He felt that he was inserting himself into the story too much and that he was depersonalizing the tale. His initial self-imposed deadline for completing the book was one year, and he believed that it would have been better to just cut his losses and pass the project to someone else. But, before making that final decision, he said he realized the he could write the story from Achak's eyes except that he knew he'd have to make up the details for the novel to be readable. In relating this anecdote to us, he made it pretty clear that he was embarrassed to even be bringing up his new idea. But he called Achak and told him how he wanted to write the story and asked if it was ok if he took artistic license with the details of his life. Achak just laughed at him and said that's what he thought Dave had been doing the whole time.. Suffice to say, the book got written and doing so really made an impression on the author. He travelled to southern Sudan several times during the course of writing the novel and seemed to have become very close with several of "The Lost Boys" of Sudan. A few of the guys who had been relocated to the States were in attendance as well and one guy (David something... I only remember b/c Dave answered questions posed to "David" until he realized that they both had the same name... that was funny) helped field the audience questions. And Dave was excited to have the audience questions. Except for the one or two about HWoSG... he just became so embarrassed anytime that came up. The word "staggering" was used to describe something else, and he just kind of crumpled on stage, "Ugh... there's THAT word again." But the questions about Sudan and the history and Marial Bai. He obviously loved. He seemed at ease when he felt like he was teaching people about stuff that had very little to do with himself. He was proud to be able to bring this story to people who never would have experienced it in such a personal way before. It seemed really easy for him to get into the history and the causes of things in Sudan (and Achak's life), and it was pretty inspiring. Even though he never read a passage from the book and spoke very very little about the only book of his that I'd actually read, I still very much enjoyed it. I wish, now, that I had read the book prior to this lecture/Q&A thing since, naturally, now is when I have questions I want to ask. And because he totally revealed a pretty major plot development... I'll spare you on that one. But getting to hear the how-it-came-to-be story, seeing the photos of the actual places and people involved, and hearing and seeing the emotion put into this book by the author has really made reading it a much more enjoyable experience. I mean, I guess it's more enjoyable. Impossible to empirically prove, but I'm sticking with my hypothesis. And now I'd really like to find a cause outside of myself into which I could lose myself. But the closest I came was searching google for jobs in Sudan for about a week. Turns out that you can't really get paid to do that stuff. I'm such a stupid American consumer. Also, when I was writing notes to remind me of what I wanted to say about this thing I wrote this down: It's easier to not feel something that you do feel than it is to feign a feeling you don't really have I wish I could remember why I wrote that, but it completely escapes me now. I guess it's also a pretty obvious truism tho, so perhaps it's best that I can't remember what I was gonna say.
I also thought these things were funny. This event happend at Imaginon which is this totally badass place for kids to hang out off of the public library downtown. I'd have loved this when I was little and pure and not so damned jaded. And I probably would not have found it odd that these sculptures pictured at right are the first things that would have greeted me when I walked in the door. But now it amuses me. I suppose that's all I'll say about that.
I would be remiss were I to write all this crap and not drop a link to the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation, which attempts to help relocated Sudanese as well as rebuild war-affected towns and villages in Sudan. (and from whom I stole this picture of a sunset in Marial Bai) Check it out.
And here are the signature pages from the three books Allison and I had signed
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius	How We Are Hungry	What Is the What

Labels: Allison, Books

I made this thing for Bryan turning 30.

Labels: bryan

Bryan sent me this link. Cool.

Silent Weapons (with Holster) 03 November 2007 sk Net Cafe - Charlotte, NC
Finally made it out to see Eston's newly acquired musical home in concert the other day. Biased tho I may be, I was pleasantly surprised. I got there kind of late and missed most of the first set by Holster... I'd never heard them before either, so I wasn't overly worried. But I kind of liked them as well. The lead singer was fun to watch and, for some reason, reminded me of David Byrne. I have no basis for that... it's just what I thought of when I was watching. I only had a couple of photos... neither were that great... but they're here for the taking or viewing or whatever. They're playing again next Tuesday at the Milestone, and I'm not at all unhappy about seeing them again. Perhaps I'll have more of a real opinion then. The only thing that I had time about which to be annoyed was the muddiness of the sound. At first I thought it was just the lead singer either not really belting it out or just being low in the mix... When Silent Weapons played, I felt like I was losing Eliza in the songs sometimes too. So I'm chalking that up to either sound problems or venue acoustics. Or lack thereof. Actually... you can't really have a lack of acoustics, can you? It's really a matter of quality as opposed to quantity.
But the only reason I went was to see Silent Weapons... I did catch that whole show. And, like I said, I was pleasantly surprised. I'd really only heard songs on myspace, and I don't really pay attention. I dunno why. I guess it's that stupid player with all it's controls locked down or the poor buffering... whatever... it's not talk-about-why-myspace-sucks time. Right... music.
From stage-right... Eston looking very pleased with himself.	Eliza trying to figure out just what, exactly, to do with that gun...	And Josh looking like he's doing that AC/DC kick-step across the stage thing. (he wasn't)
(perhaps I should say that I, obviously, used a lot of Photoshop lighting and red-eye effects to try and make these photos better...)
	Well... it didn't take her long to figure out what to do with it. Eston busted a string on, like, song 2. Idiot. His playing must be completely superfluous tho, as it didn't seem to affect the rest of the show. Hopefully he's learned his lesson now...
So. I like drums. There is, as you can see, no drummer in Silent Weapons. Which, is you watch the videos, you'll hear does not mean that there are no drums in Silent Weapons. Josh, as I understand it, programs the bass beats, and all the songs are played to backing tracks. On the one hand, it's really cool to be able to execute your songs basically the same way night-after-night. (I didn't hold it against The Helio Sequence) And I am kind of a sucker for the fusion of talent and technology. But, on the other hand, a drum track... Something about a real-live drumbeat is so much more comforting and emotional and raw than digital tracks. Not that I'm trying to get stuck on one minor thing. The tempos and beats that were there were groovy and entertaining. I just missed the sound of someone actually banging on something. And the sound issues... there was definitely some muddiness that pulled away from the show, but nothing I couldn't get over. Sometimes I just wanted to hear Eliza better, and I couldn't. I do think that both bands were just suffering from the acoustics of the venue. sk Net is a low-ceilinged, narrow, and long coffee bar. Not really the best place for big crisp sounds. The band itself seemed to be pretty tight and on with the backing tracks. At the very least, there weren't any major issues, and they sounded good. And like they were having fun. Well... Josh looked like he really wanted it to sound good. As Eston said, "Everyone listens to Josh but watches me." Makes sense. I'm going to steer away from making any sort of comparissions. At this point, I'd end up saying they sounded a bit like the Rockfords, but I think I'd take that back in an hour. The song-writing was pretty catchy and hooky tho, and I don't recall being bored. I didn't record the whole show this time, and it's actually been a while since I've tried to write about something I didn't have recorded. Strange that it matters. But my memory sucks. The two videos I got were decent and, I think, a pretty good representation of the show. There are definitely two distinct moods in the songs... the slower spacey kind of thing and then the more punk/pop kind of song to which I am more partial. Except for if I'm home alone lost in a project. Or really sad. Or on tons of drugs, perhaps. But I digress. What else? ...The lighting was actually really neat. Especially for such a small place. Basically, it was just cool that the lights were doing something other than shine. (cuz I'm pretty sure there wasn't anyone actually running lights.) Silent Weapons are playing with Holster at this next show too, and I'm looking forward to it. It'll be nice to go in having some kind of previous knowledge. Uhmmm... and, to be completely honest, I wasn't really struck by the uniqueness of either band at the time, so it'll be cool to get to listen a bit closer this time without everything just being "new." Dispite my earlier complaints... there are some good sounding songs on myspace... Silent Weapons on myspace Holster on myspace
To be fair about the uniqueness statement... and, really, everything I said... I definitely wasn't giving 100% of my attention to the stage cuz there were other people there with whom I could interact. These people. So that was mostly nice. Except for the universal annoyance of ever trying to interact with anyone ever at a concert. Or maybe that's just me.
Sarah	Judith	Shirin (and Sarah again)
And, dammit, I almost forgot this one. I jumped up on stage and took this from behind the band looking out. (obviously) I think it turned out to be pretty cool. That's Jason - Holster's bass player - standing in the middle. Isn't it sweet when bands stay to watch bands who perform later? Yes. Yes, it is.
ugh. I forgot this one too. Definitely the last photo this time...
And, lastly, the couple of videos I have from the show.

Labels: concerts, Eston, Judith, music, Sarah