ps

totally forgot in my recent restaurant non-fiction marathon that the best one was
cxvii. the sorcerer's apprentices, lisa abend
fascinating look at el bulli and the free work that they are provided with by chefs who are desperate to do a stage there! and also the monotony of perfection and the mythology of the entire concept

plus i just finished
cxviii. medium raw, anthony bourdain
i like his conversational yet violently descriptive writing style. this was a bunch of essays mainly about the industry and people in the industry - the ones about david chang and justo thomas were particularly interesting.

not a best of year list

cxv. eating animals, jonathan safran foer
as a former student of agriculture i did not find many things surprising in this book though i think i was supposed to. ultimately, the argument for being vegetarian rather than eating only well-cared-for animals was not made well, neither was there any sort of discussion about the ethics of animal products and therefore veganism. fail, big fat fail. nowhere near as incendiary as its reputation.

cxvi. weight, jeanette winterson


lxxi. bill cunningham new york
as an avid amateur photographer this was extremely fascinating! passion as art as life.

lxxii. the cave of forgotten dreams
this was interesting and beautiful but herzog's philosophical musing was a little too unsubstantiated and whimsical for a historical doco.

lxxiii. we need to talk about kevin
tilda swinton tilda swinton, what else is there to say? there actually isn't much dialogue in this film, it's all the silences that count.

lxxiv. the ides of march
oh political machinations. it was good i suppose. ryan gosling's midface is a little depressed, i don't get what all the fuss is about.

lxxv. melancholia
i felt the same thing as when i saw antichrist, which is to say i felt like i was stuck watching it forever. interminably long. and yet engrossing. and i probably won't watch it again. ultimately lars von trier has drawn out the minutiae of relationships in strange situations, and yet he is just showing it, not really evoking or provoking anything extra. i liked the tree of life more.

well guess what this is a list of

cix. ash malinda lo
cx. heat bill buford
cxi. the nasty bits anthony bourdain
cxii. the secret diaries anne lister
cxiii. not buying it judith levine
cxiv. the mind's eye oliver sacks

cvii. the yiddish policemen's union, michael chabon
this was impressive for simultaneously having zero loose ends and yet finishing unclearly enough to not be too neat and self-containing. awesome mystery story. now i attempt kavalier and clay again.

cviii. there but for the, ali smith
this was a book more about words and puns and wordplay than any story, though she does the typical ali smith unrelated sections pulled together by one character thing again. it was interesting in a way that one could pick it up and choose a bit to read again without then having to finish it.
eta: the font size for this book was bordering on large print, no joke. and so much white space around the sides too. unnecessary and somewhat jarring like i had to hold the book further away. what was the point? you don't like trees, ali smith or publisher? or you want us to feel like we read a hefty book really quickly?


lxix. 13 assassins
the japanese conceptions of honour, loyalty and politics are so very interesting. it means so much and there are so many rules. and so much blood.

lxx. harry potter and the deathly hallows part 2
best of the entire series which makes sense, no cringing from me re: acting anymore. except for the epilogue!! grrr

finesse and finish: anne sofie von otter's australian debut extravaganza

xiii. sydney opera house concert hall nov 3

this is clearly turning into the year of classical music, aka returning unashamedly to my roots! i don't understand why each concert at the opera house has a different ticket price. in any case the under 30s tickets that the sydney symphony has going is a pretty darn good deal, leaving sufficient funds to invest in opera glasses, which i probably actually should have done. the audience demographics were very interesting and i will leave it at that.

the vocal program was split clearly into 'classical' with selections from canteloube's chants d'auvergne and then the pop section. the former was better than i expected, though in some places the orchestra was too loud. overall i thought there was less swooping than the version on youtube conducted by minkowski, though the latter definitely brought together the selected songs together in a more cohesive way. sometimes highdef video doesn't give you the whole picture.

i don't know what to think of there consistently being excess furniture on the stage, as it were, during the small orchestra pieces, it felt slightly unprofessional, and it just doesn't look nice to have a quartet of strings with empty seats streaming out to the sides and full woodwind section behind.

the pop song section was alright, i suppose. it's interesting that the comfortable range varies so much between classical (around C5/D5? i think? i don't actually ever think of music as being typed out) and pop (around F4/G4?) modes. the gentleman sitting in front of me chatted with his lady friend during the interval about his appreciation of von otter's ariodante (i cheered inside) and subsequently his theory regarding why opera singers start to sing pop songs. i am inclined to agree, the second half was alright but didn't seem to require as much concentrated effort. actually it may have been better than expected, that's how well i prepared my expectations. also! no shoes on the concert hall stage! i can't even begin to guess the last time that would have happened with the sydney symphony. the encore was 'smile', nice and mellow.

my only complaint really is not a complaint but i was sitting so far back that i couldn't see her face.

that is until i lined up and got my (mozart gluck haydn) opera arias booklet signed, which i had had the foresight to bring to work that day. they weren't selling them, so my pre-appreciation was obvious. i'm short but not that short but even sitting down she seemed really tall. all i can say is imagine the ice-cool white witch of narnia with the regally kind and yet slightly detached demeanour of aslan, with a head to match almost a la donald sutherland in pride and prejudice. all in the best way possible. cooler than tilda swinton and that is saying something.

eta: oh yes here have a quick cam pic

xiv. sydney opera house utzon room nov 6

this was an entirely different room, designed specifically for acoustic chamber music, and the sound was fantastic. the layout was a little unwieldy though, the long rectangular room had the stage at mid-length and chairs arranged 270 degrees around, actually giving those sitting on the short sides quite a poor view. luckily i showed up early and snagged a good seat in the 4th row (out of 5!) directly facing the stage. (i'm pretty sure i surprised the attendant when i rocked up in my adidas sneakers and held out my ticket, i think she was going to ask if i was lost.) i could count on one hand the people in the room younger than the others by at least a couple of decades.

again classical and pop sections with differing vocal styles and ranges to match. this time the classical consisted of scandinavian lieder and some percy grainger, including an energetic 'handel in the strand' from bengt forsberg. up close the dynamics and phrase-endings were finessed to perfection. if anything (and this is serious nit-picking on my part, especially because i'm only going by my own taste and freely admit i don't actually know much) i wondered sometimes whether there is some kind of deeper pitch barrier to break through before the pitch note's body begins, particularly in classical mode (again, pop mode seems 'easier' and more fun than serious). am i even making sense? i wonder if this is contributing to the swooping in more recent youtube live videos, though live it isn't as obvious any more. or something technically has changed/reverted, for the better in my opinion.

svante henryson's bass background and percussive talents were on display and he loves his harmonics! pop included jobim, abba, and a great version of blackbird. the audience lapped it up. encore was mi mancherai, finally some italian to finish off!

i would have loved some german lieder. with the cello why not some brahms? ah well. no i mean i would have loved an australian debut showcasing career greatest achievements but that'd be impossible for anybody.

xii. sydney symphony and stephen hough, dvorak's new world symphony and mozart piano conc no. 21
i got last minute tickets and it was ok, the conductor mark wigglesworth is very interesting! i'm pretty sure he conducted the dvorak without a score. also his conducting clearly went beyond any notion of marking bars at all, more just shaping the music in somewhat vague ways. anyway interesting.

cvi. atmospheric disturbances, rivka galchen
the 3 out of 5 star average on goodreads perfectly represents my feelings about this book. i suppose it was well written in a way, but the narrator/protagonist makes the premise clear in the 1st sentence, and does not develop beyond that, in fact devolves with no resolution. halfway through i was bored and looking for a hook which didn't materialise. having a part 1 and part 2 implies some kind of difference or development usually, but no, not here. the narrator is hard to identify with, clearly this was the intention, but it just distances the reader. also the narrator being a new yorker was not conveyed at all through his voice, i kept thinking that it was a european book. hence why choose new york as part of the setting? it could have been anywhere.

signor deh non partire

cii. granta book of the family
this started out more like 'book of sons writing about their relationship with whichever parent was more dysfunctional', but then i hit upon the genius idea of reading the female authors only for a while and that fixed things. the last one was by bret easton ellis and i thought it was non-fiction until i realised that the first-person voice was supposed to be female, possibly almost halfway through. one of my favourite things is trying to determine whether a piece is fiction or non-fiction; sometimes it's just not clear and this might actually be a sign of good writing. in my opinion.

ciii. granta 100
one of the better grantas that i have read. great selection and great authors featured.

civ. preincarnate, shaun micallef
a time-travelling vicious cycle, but made hilarious due to micallevian wit. such and such a book received 'an unseasonably warm reception', stuff like that.

cv. werewolves in their youth, michael chabon
i clearly didn't look very closely when i bought this book because only when i started the 2nd 'chapter' did i realised that this was in fact a book of short stories. they were pretty good, michael chabon does good short close-up work.

whatup dudes

hello large audience, hello! bet you didn't miss me.

in the last month i experienced an earthquake, the tail end of a hurricane, a three michelin-starred restaurant, and a raspberry lime rickey. no points will be given for guessing in which corner of which continent these events occurred. here are some other observations, some of them may be cynical, surprise surprise:

- now i understand why starbucks had to close so many locations in australia, because any single starbucks in america could do the same amount of business as the sum total of new south wales' franchises. lines out the door, all day every day. my number one conclusion is that american coffee must suck.

- there are people who drink dark carbonated beverages for breakfast

- bananas are literally 10 times more expensive at home

- same goes for lobsters

- washington dc does not believe in convenience after 5pm and on weekends

- if one were to enquire of the supervisor why the discount on iced tea does not show up on the self-checkout, the supervisor then explains that a membership card is needed by asking if one has one, but one does not, but the supervisor appears not to have heard the answer, and while one stands by preparing to pay the full price, the supervisor swipes her override card without even caring and thereby gives undeserving customers a huge discount

- no wonder the economy has the shits

- slim jims are officially the worst thing i put in my mouth during the entire time i was there, it was like string and spicy cholesterol in a cellophane tube, disgusting. inedible.

- all possible condiments are in original glass bottles

- butter is almost always whipped when served with complimentary bread - i highly recommend! easily spread and less highly consumed

- there is such a thing as a grilled cheese truck with a massive queue at all times

- baseball is awesome, i am a convert

- not only is baseball awesome, but for the first time ever i have a baseball cap which fits my large head

- ventilation in hotel bathrooms has apparently never been heard of, except in canada

- i 100% seriously think that sydney has the highest smokers per capita of any major city walking along its streets, i almost want to prove that this is true


now the part i know everyone has come to love and expect, book and movie reviews! hohoho
and the 100th book review is..

drumroll

c. trash, dorothy allison
i got this in the used section at the harvard book store, which had the best graphic novel section of any used book store i have ever been in. it was pretty good. i have a hard time distinguishing between the author and her first-person personas.

ci. granta 86: film
granta like all magazines is a little hit and miss, this one was only just ok.

lxvii. xmen: first class
not bad, considering. james mcavoy was so earnest.

lxviii. win win
a nice little movie. paul giamatti played paul giamatti.

WHAT IS THE 100TH BOOK GOING TO BE, THAT IS THE QUESTION.

xcviii. the family law, benjamin law
the author is basically an asian-australian david sedaris, the book was a collection of family/personal essays about growing up as a multiple minority. and so hilarious!!! literally swallowing my burst out laughter / pretending to have a choking fit on the train-type funny. i also got a lot of the in-jokes that you would not necessarily get unless you have also spelled out cantonese words in english and know what a strange language it is. basically this is the closest thing that i have to identify with that i’ve read in a really really long time. maybe ever. he might be the male version of me.

xcix. granta 88: mothers
i don’t know how i didn’t know that granta existed until recently. anyway the theme of ’mothers’ was much like you might expect, many men reflecting on their childhood relationships with their mothers, which i found strange because it is so far away from what my relationship with my mum is like. but they were also slightly cliched in that oedipal way. also pregnancy, breast cancer and mothers-in-law were covered, as might be expected. overall i quite enjoy anthologies.


film roundup:

lxi. agora
sometimes you just can't trust margaret and david. they loved this film, i think. i found it really disjointed and inconclusive. religious war comes in cycles, blah blah etc.

lxii. bridesmaides
this was ok. the toilet humour was overdone but eh. overall quite enjoyable.

lxiii. hanna
this was not ok. the premise started out with interest but i kept feeling like cate blanchett was reprising her role in indiana jones. she had better hair this time around though.

lxiv. julie and julia
did julia childs really have such a swoop swooping voice? did she really have to stoop to chop onions at knee level? i mean really. it was ok, overall.

lxv. moon
this was really good! i like this kind of science fiction whereby once a currently non-existing premise is assumed then everything else follows logically. i like how they were all different. (vague but otherwise i'll give it away)

lxvi. the conspirator
holy depressing, man. injustice! *shakes fist* given the cartoonish opening i was pleasantly surprised by the dramatic force sustained during the courtroom scenes.

cinnamon almond egg tarts woop

pshaw

sometimes i think that social media is extremely self-indulgent, there is so much trivial 'me me me' going on. lately i feel like by contributing i will only be perpetuating this obnoxious trend. sometimes i just want to talk about real things. like how RPA is the best show ever. medical procedures and factory production lines and hunter versus herd animal documentaries are my favourite things to watch ever. reality tv narration and sound bites and cliffhanging ad breaks are at the other end of that spectrum. in other words masterchef is starting to kill me but i want to know who wins.

highly satisfactory

xcvii. a visit from the goon squad, jennifer egan
i quite enjoyed this though it was quite different from what i expected - as the pulitzer prize winner i expected gripping detail and interwoven stories and strong characters. actually it had all those things but in a loose and non-linear way, which i suppose is relatively unconventional. it was more like a collection of interconnected short stories which all came together in a four-dimensional portrait of a loosely related group of people. therefore it also allowed consumption in smaller portions, with satisfaction from each and every chapter, and no cliffhangers!

add it up

xciii. middlemarch’ by george eliot.
i would say that this novel has the greatest number of fully realised characters and interwoven family histories that i have ever read. many novels would struggle to encompass but one fourth of the narrative threads, notwithstanding the spectrum of moral, monetary and matrimonial quandaries explored within. i find many novels are vertical in terms of epic family histories but i liked that the interactions across the community during a single generation instead show the reality that minor events drive the dramas of life.
ok basically it was good and people are complicated! #braindead

xciv. the snows of kilimanjaro, hemingway
it was quite good. the 2nd half of the collection mainly concerned one character, nick, and i never know what to think when a character recurs in an otherwise seemingly themeless collection. though of course the entire book focused on the classic hemingway themes of drinking, men and women, gambling, europe, fishing, bullfighting, the usual. mostly i like that hemingway describes landscape through its relationship with the characters’ actions.

xcv. the mistress’s daughter,  a.m. homes
read this apparently for the 2nd time even though i forgot that when i borrowed it at the library. as a memoir i found it interesting and unusual in that apart from the subject of her adoption and birth parents she didn’t really discuss anything else, whereas most other memoirs that i’ve read apparently give everything up too easily.

xcvi. the portrait of a lady, henry james
i have realised it may in fact be possible to read too much, i was getting burned out for a while there but once i hit the 2nd half of the book i breezed right through it. oh man, what to say? someone told me they couldn’t get into the book because they didn’t like isabel, but clearly they hadn’t gotten far enough to see how heinous some of the other characters were. in the end it wasn’t so much a portrait of her as her unfortunate involvement in a larger plot, though it was always through her lens that everything was experienced. pansy’s name truly befit her, sad to say, even though it wasn’t her fault. my impression of caspar goodwood also wasn’t very good, he seems so boring and wooden. ralph was my favourite. i expected a more conclusive ending as well but i suppose it is suitably ambivalent.

whup

partially posted elsewhere
xci. pulse, julian barnes

overall i would rate it as merely 'ok', there were a lot of words and the writing was pretty loose for short stories. there was a lot of continuous conversation quoting and no female inner voices to speak of, in either 1st or 2nd person. needless to say i do not really approve.

not posted elsewhere

xcii. men without women, ernest hemingway

seriously misleading title, not without women at all. in fact not much to do with men as 'men' or men 'without women' at all. in fact i would have read this collection much earlier if not for the title. good though, what's new? this is true succinctness of word, my friends.

return to regular scheduling

lxxxix. lost japan, alex kerr

very very interesting book about japan, the culture in different areas, and the interplay of history and western influence and the modern japanese psyche. 

xc. this book will save your life, a.m. homes

i guess this book was ok, the lack of chapters actually made quite an impact in a continuous storyline way and also because i don't like it when authors feel they have to end each chapter on a witty/shocking conclusion. i thought it would be a stereotypical story about a rich white guy's mid-life crisis but some characters as satire and some characters as extremely real make up for it.

a few more things then i'll shut up

the iphone has a better screen auto-brightness than the desire, definitely.
the hold-down button function on android is essentially a right-click for options, but nooo apple doesn't do right-click, does it. this explains everything.
safari may have unlimited browser windows but it's probably because it's like a normal web browser on a computer that you have to manually close each tab. the default android browser opens pages in new tabs and then on going back will auto-close the tab leaving you back at the original page, so you don't have 5 pages open at the same time.
i also take it back partially about the lack of finesse in scrolling, because speed makes a difference in the contact list. why not in safari as well. speaking of which..
goddamn why doesn't iOS allow copying new contacts onto the sim card from the phone? it makes no sense. what does apple get out of making it hard for me to access my contacts? and i don't want to connect it to itunes and sync and all that shit.

day 2, further iphone observations

- in safari, one can only scroll a specific distance with one flick regardless of speed. with android, a faster flick leads to continuous scrolling down with gradual attenuation, while a slow little flick will only scroll a little. more room for error, but more room for flexibility and developing scrolling finesse.

- another thing that the iOS likes to brag about (see screen orientation) - opening links in new windows in safari. no, it won't just open a new window right away. it has to retract to the window overview screen so you can see that there is another window opening, and then go into the new window. i can't tell whether it wastes time prior to starting the page load but that's the impression i get and it's annoying.

- one advantage to safari is that there are (so far) unlimited new windows to tab between, whereas the default android browser has a max of 5 or something.

- the customisation of icons on home screens is really annoying on iOS, what with having to move them to the common bar at the bottom before they can be transferred between home screens. compare this with android allowing icons to float in limbo while moving between home screens in the background.. no comparison.

- last thing is a hardware thing on the desire which is fantastic - the notification light. when i get a message or a missed phone call or my battery is running out, the light goes on in a colour of my choosing, so i don't have to turn the screen on to see if i need to turn the screen on.

android vs. iphone, the initial impression

so! my beloved htc desire decided to start shitting itself a few months ago, soon after i got the initial unstable release of 'words with friends'. on prolonged word manipulation it would get really hot and occasionally auto-shutdown and reboot. then it started happening when 3G coverage was spotty and taking a long time to load pages, with the bootup screen vibrating to life up to 10 times before it decided it was cool enough to proceed. in the past couple of weeks any time i used regular low-impact internet for more than 5 to 10 minutes the phone would auto-shutdown and try to reboot. finally yesterday i decided that the situation was untenable and required an intervention, before my warranty expires in august.

so i took it into the shop today and it will take 4-6 weeks (!) to be repaired. i hope to hell they do what needs to be done (replace the motherboard, apparently, according to 3 billion other people on the internet who have the same problem, and literally no other problem with this phone). and so i got a replacement phone for this period.. you guessed it an iphone 3GS. rather than being disappointed i have decided to really try and compare the two operating systems as objectively as possible.

impressions from the first day:

- the iOS is much more like a traditional mobile phone than the mobile computer that i came to regard my desire as. most obvious is the fact that all options are set in the phone's general settings, including importing contacts, notifications. there is no way to manage the settings for a particular program from within it, though this may be different with apps. the android system allows a lot deeper investigation into everything, and when it diverts you to settings to change something it will return you back to where you were! not so with iOS. leaving the impression that the iOS is nothing but a frontend, with many rounded square buttons to be sure, but a frontend nonetheless.

- keyboard - the iOS keyboard doesn't even compare with the old nokia keypads with the multiple characters per key, which is what swype is similar to with longer-hold keys. you have to press another key to toggle between letter/number/symbol keypads. also the spelling/autocorrect is pretty crap, no wonder fuckyouautocorrect.com exists. i much much much prefer tap-the-word-and-a-list-of-alternatives-appears on the android. NOT TO MENTION SWYPE WHICH I CAN NO LONGER LIVE WITHOUT, in which by 'live' i mean 'function at optimum efficiency'. so far on the iphone i haven't figured out how to insert the cursor mid-word to edit text.

- the picture of the clock app means that i have to tap the screen to open a large clock. this is where iOS can't compete - widgets. i like to have my agenda and to-do list open right on the home page, so i don't have to open the programs individually.

- iOS likes to show off that it can change screen orientation by slightly contracting the screen for 0.2 of a second during the process and therefore wasting my time! or it may just be slower. is the iphone 4 faster?

- iOS doesn't seem to have select-all as a function, whereas android has it everywhere that any kind of single or multiple selection can be made.

conclusion: so far i haven't found anything that iOS excels at over android. except that it stays on, but that's more a desire hardware problem than anything android-related. oh right, also probably 'words with friends', damn you.

recommendations from today: android phones could benefit from a physical mute button, a single hardware advantage of the iphone.

STAY TUNED, MORE RIVETING ANALYSIS TO COME!

lxxxvi. i was told there'd be cake, sloane crosley
i was told by the blurb that sloane crosley is the new david sedaris. not entirely accurate. over-advertising. still, she's on the right path with the funny anecdotes and witty turns of phrase. a little more dramatisation and recurring characters and she'd be there

lxxxvii. best australian essays 2010, ed. robert drewe
lxxxviii. best australian stories 2007, ed. robert drewe
surely we have enough writers and novelists and journalists that we can have different genres of writers pick short works for different genres of anthology? both of these were just ok, nothing fantastic jumped out at me.




lx. babies
quite interesting documentary, more to see differences between cultures and how parents raise their kids around the world

la laa laaa

just watched my sister play in the sydney uni symphony orchestra playing saint-saens' 3rd symphony, i.e where the theme from 'babe' comes from. good thing that particular variation on the main theme is only played once because i was on the verge of laughing/crying for those 30 seconds. man, that movie came out two-thirds of my life ago.

now looking at it that pig is kinda ugly.

xi. haunting handel - brandenburg orchestra with fiona campbell

well. overall it was ok. i paid like a third of the price for being one of very few 'under-30s' in the room, i'm not sure i would pay more. the program was half vivaldi and half handel, with a baroque oboe concerto and several arias. 1st mezzo performance with the brandenburg orch since their debut in 1990, apparently.

firstly the sound - i don't know whether it was the acoustics or my seat near the back of the stalls level (in a small hall) but the projection of both orchestra and voice was not loud enough. perhaps the sound rises into the cavernous ceiling of the city recital hall. perhaps i like my music louder.

baroque bows are not kind on one's posture or profile. the violinists appeared unattractively hulking and like they couldn't stretch their bowing arms out, which they couldn't. it totally explains the short last notes of the period's pieces though.

i was definitely not a fan of the orchestra's on-stage applause of the soloist after every single piece. they would finish playing, and then they would all start clapping! if there were two soloists they would applaud each other! so unprofessional. clearly this is a policy fully condoned from the top down. i disapprove. i want namesake bach-style strait-laced grandeur not living room recital.

now to fiona campbell. firstly, the costume changes! more outfits than a chinese mother-of-the-bride at a 10-course banquet reception. i don't know what the done thing is for trouser role arias normally because i don't know anything, but if you're going to change into a white tux (with the kind of pant leg that completely covers stilettoed foot) for Serse and Ruggiero (Alcina) then why sing Ariodante later in the program in a champagne frothy frock? whatever. it would have been better without the tux at all. also i don't like the inherent dress-up insinuation, if you're singing a trouser role you better damn well mean it regardless of what you are wearing.

secondly, as aforementioned, the projection was not great enough, and in the lower notes she could barely be heard above the orchestra, say below G₄ (G above middle C, i think that's how the notation works). maybe it was the tone or lack of edge in that range but it wasn't punchy enough. the high A (A5) was also forced on a few occasions. i will say her trills were good though and she didn't omit them as some do according to my education from youtube.

as a final note the audience demographics were very interesting to me because i would never be in their midst usually, but maybe this will change if i make a habit of attending these types of concerts.

for some reason i can't actually type in the text box, so here is my review of: lxxxv. the god of small things, arundhati roy. as you may have guessed from the preview it does not make my 'good indian literature' list. i think it tried to be epic by building and building up to a definitive event by imbuing each character with legend, but in the wider scheme of indian literature this would merely be a blip.

the probability that i am delirious is quite high

lxxxiv. the best australian stories 2010, ed. cate kennedy

really really great. there was not one story that i did not like.

i am reading arundhati roy's 'the god of small things' and so far am not impressed by the rushdie-like compound words and magic realism. i will give props for select imagery and back-history scene switching.

opera update: i now know enough to judge that anne sofie von otter generally does good handel and has better musicality and precision than most other mezzos, but that paula rasmussen is a better 'serse'. would i be correct however in assuming that most people would not enjoy listening to opera as general background music? i.e. can i listen to it at work without alienating everybody? serious question. i can't really tell anymore.

beep boop

lx. winter's bone
really good! strong acting all around and i think they really cut out all the walking she had to do. i don't know what else to say, everything was suitably creepy and uncertain.

lxi. igor
kid's movie, we watching this straight after winter's bone because 'it [the latter] was not entertaining'

somehow in the last day i have become a bit of an opera fan, who knew der rosenkavalier was that good? who smells silver roses? why do they all do it? ETA if i bothered to look up the libretto translation i would realise as i just have that there is rose oil on the silver rose as a device, obviously

best american extremes

lxxxii. best american short stories 2009, alice sebold
good collection! not many which weren't immediately recognisable as 'really good'. yup really specific

lxxxiii. best american essays 1992, susan sontag
now this i can get specific about. i expected more. maybe it was the time or maybe it was the editor, but 90% of the essays were not topical, and could have been written any time, not specifically in 1991. i mean, the topics were historical, literally. they could have been titled 'on audubon', 'on why hamlet sucks', 'on famous paintings i don't like', 'on why i don't like england because i don't like england', 'on mickey mouse and how because he is important to me he is important to america in 1991 because i am john updike', 'on arias which shaped me as a gay man and here i am showing off my musicianship essay writing skills'.......
.......you understand.

resolution: to break my habit of constantly refreshing social media, imbibing too many small unimportant pieces of information and as a consequence worsening my attention span and short-term memory. also possibly watching less stupid tv just because it's on

goal: to spend longer periods of time doing real things, not limited to but including reading, learning, painting, organising, learning to play basketball again

this is where chrome nanny comes in, to help with my self-control.

buh buh bowww

x. the last romantic, sydney opera house
so, i went to the symphony last night and for the first time sat in the choir stalls behind the stage at the opera house. have to say, the sound was not great, which was unexpected, and really should be better if they are selling tickets for these seats in a world-class concert hall. anyway there was a great brass ensemble piece and joyce yang playing rach 3 was pretty impressive, i can't say the same for rachmaninoff's 3rd symphony though. funny thing of note: from behind obviously we could see the men in full white tie and tails, with the chairs the kind with a spine to split the tails around when they sat down. some of them just sat on their tuxedos though hehe.

lxxx. the girl who played with fire, stieg larsson
seriously, even worse than the 1st book. seriously, the movie was better. i don't know whether to blame the translation, seeing as it was riddled with grammatical errors, but maybe they left them in to preserve that euro-english flavour. also the 'funny' parts were anything but. worst book i have read this year by far.

lxxxi. best american comics, 2008
not bad, a few strange ones in there. i don't know what to think of lynda barry and her feint-ruled paper.

lix. welcome to the rileys
hmm, a little bit good, a little bit eh. realistic ending.

o'_'o

clearly i had not realised the puntastic possibilities of 'knowing the drill'

lxxix. the black swan, nassim nicholas taleb
a lot of pontificating on the nature of the reality of reality and how therefore we should not use mathematical models based on the past to predict the future, like using a map of the alps to cross the pyrenees because it's the best thing available. definitely illuminating in the light of the GFC, but possibly mostly because of the imagery of the titular concept and bringing down the establishment, both corporate and academic.

lvii. the king's speech
somewhat less of a great movie than i expected, thanks to the academy! other than colin firth's performance and the portent of the events involved, there wasn't much.

lviii. barney's version
i don't know whether to say it was interesting or melodramatic. possibly both. several caricatures. good makeup though.

you know the drill

lxxvii. the big necessity, rose george
very interesting investigation into poor sanitation around the world and the innovations people are coming up with to reduce disease and pollution, putting shit back into the environment! also many insights into how to convince people to change their habits.. money doesn't work.

lxxviii. the end of overeating, david kessler
hmm, in the end it all boils down to a genetically vicious cycle of sugar, fat and salt. eat and repeat. apparently you must set rules for yourself if you want to break the cycle. oh really?

;

scanwiches has a book coming out?!? such a rort. if it isn't obvious i am feeling very cynical right now, exacerbated by my currently reading 'the black swan - the impact of the highly improbable' and being annoyed at the arrogant tone and the breaking-down of commonsense for the stupid people.

what does one do with the folded poster cover of mcsweeney's 13?

i want to walk around

i suck at words with friends

lxxv. blubberland - the dangers of happiness, elizabeth farrelly
written in the context of architecture, this was more a treatise on the monumental wastage behind what constitutes 'success' in western society, and the possible genetics and evolutionary reasons for it. very interesting.  a couple of pages encapsulated what amy chua tried to possibly satirise in the whole tiger mother debate.

lxxvi. the gathering, anne enright
possibly the most nebulous book that i've read that i would call an overall success.

------------------------

liii. picture me - very interesting documentary about the real world of modeling

liv. tangled - better than i expected

lv. never let me go - keira knightley looked positively skeletal in this

lvi. machete - sorry robert rodriguez, you are not as good as quentin tarantino. the social commentary on illegal immigration was a nice touch though

REMEMBER..

..THIS??!?!

and now raquel zimmermann is shoving the distal appendage of her upper limb into lady gaga in the 'born this way' video. FINGER ON THE PULSE, THAT'S ME.

other recent things

how is it that humans have evolved to need at least some sleep every 24 hours? and yet sleep time needed is so varied depending on each person's environment

succinct movie reviews:

xli. the girl who played with fire - relatively intense

xlii. joan rivers documentary - ball-busting hilarious

xliii. the kids are all right - given the online 'discussion', better than i expected

xliv. the queen - eh

xlv. the lake house - double soppy eh

xlvi. conviction - ok, serious

xlvii. the experiment - violent and crazy, not as revealing as i expected

xlviii. (500) days of summer - a montage. and not much else

xlix. the tree - quite good! charlotte gainsbourg's french and english voices are very different.

l. freakonomics - disappointing, to some extent

li. inside job - holy shit everyone should see this, even academia is corrupt

lii. true grit - couldn't hear half the dialogue since everyone was grunting with a mouthful of peanut butter gobstopper, but it didn't matter, HILARIOUS. random bear suit, animal noises, guns everywhere. 'i have lapped filthy water from a hoof print and was glad to have it.'

lxxiv. brideshead revisited, evelyn waugh

ugh suffice to say i read it and won't read it again, the only people worth liking were celia and anthony blanche, which is not saying much.

p.s. pretty sure fenella kernebone of triple j and abc fame complimented me on a swish while i was warming up for bball semis during her game this past wednesday... and there we go confirmed via twitter! #autofollow

collected thoughts of the 3 weeks preceding the most recent

just posting notes because i can't be bothered expanding on them. suffice to say hong kong is another world.

- hong kong is eating/shopping/walking, 99% nothing else

- dim sum is still chopped up stuff in a wrapper even with a michelin hat on

- galaxy tabs are the next ipad - smaller, better

- manual pomegranate juicing results in a bloody pulp

- even the most shithole syringe infested dirty public toilet has automatic sensor taps

- rice paper is a revelation (around sticky foods)

- japanese customer service is endemic and representative of so many things

- who cares if some people are 'too weak' for regular vegemite, let them try and revive their brand! lower salt is a good option. only problem is again with marketing, no one above 6yrs old would want to buy 'my first vegemite'. even if they want to, like me.
ETA: real actual major marketing problem, i wanted to buy it and couldn't bring myself to, my first vegemite is a joke.

oh shit

coming back from holidays means being an adult again with real responsibilities and stuff

holiday-imposed hiatus to come

lxxi. the five people you meet in heaven, mitch albom
EHHH. so popular, or at least it appears so, and i don't understand why at all. nice concept, average story, very average execution.

lxxii. the curious case of benjamin button and other stories, f. scott fitzgerald
quite good. i almost expected some fuddy-duddy o. henry type stuff and therefore was pleasantly surprised.

lxxiii. design of the 20th century, charlotte and peter fiell
decided to do some research in my very recent area of interest, and everybody and their mother studied architecture! verrry interesting. there is so much to know.

lalala

viii. matt and kim, jan 21, becks festival bar, sydney festival

this was seriously the most fun gig i have been to in a long time. it was awesome! kim and matt were super energetic and enthusiastic, kim didn't stop smiling the whole time! and we had a balloon party and they just did whatever the hell they wanted, like asking guys to hold kim up as she WALKED out on to the crowd and did a booty dance. i also appreciate their MO of standing on their instruments, like why the hell not!


i realise i did not review ix. marina and the diamonds, dec 30, factory theatre

superlatively impressive, fantastic voice, appropriate props, centre stage fans for the hair. i find it a very strange phenomenon that when hearing something live, the pitch will seem absolutely perfect, and then on watching the exact same performance on a video some out-of-tune notes are more apparent. is the live enjoyment factor really that compensating?

seemingly random numbering system

xl. the social network
quite enjoyable. a movie about a website, i am still flabbergasted.

vi. the rapture, jan 6, the metro
suffocatingly hot! disgustingly humid and gross. i wasn't such a big fan and i am still eh about it.

vii. holly miranda, jan 15, the famous spiegeltent
pretty good! she was slightly different to what i expected, much more loose and jeff buckley-esque.

lxix. a model world, michael chabon
a good short story collection. i never know what to think about separate short stories one after the other with the same characters, especially in only the 2nd half of the book

lxx. manhood for amateurs, michael chabon
possibly more personal essay collection than memoir, but the memoir component was much more deeply analytical with respect to society and the changing of pop culture, than in others i have read (to wit: bill bryson). also sometimes hilarious especially when extolling on the virtues of the manbag: 'a purse is basically a vagina with a strap.. I adhered rigorously to the way of the pocket.. the only storage alternative was the dreaded belt clip, a kind of prosthetic penis, in its own inverse way as emasculating as a purse'. i found it very generous that he was able to discuss lego and the merits of custom (read: unreusable) pieces without ever referring to the obvious commercial interests involved, or the fact that lego is now like ikea furniture and just as fun.

i finished watching party down season 1 and have a sinking feeling about the future of henry and casey's relationship hahaha sigh, fav tv couple like, ever

another fortnight, another review dump

lxvii. ghost world, daniel clowes
i remember reading this really really fast after seeing the movie a long time ago and didn't really like it. i read it again quite fast and it seemed so much deeper this time, so much more jaded. it's probably me. now i want to see the movie again.

lxviii. american psycho, bret easton ellis
holy wow, the beginning of this book is so good. so gradual. and then it explodes everywhere like a bloody watermelon.

xxxix. black swan
combined with finishing the book above in the same week, this made me feel extra crazy. good movie though, overall i thought it was well done and the acting was good, it's almost sad that acting is 'good' these days when nothing is jarringly incompetent. natalie portman's neck is so small. also notch up another on the winona ryder comeback trail.

i started watching party down!! so good.

p.s. is 'movie' not a word anymore? i think my spellcheck is royally screwed up

must get mini pig

surely this is the most reblogged picture of any small animal ever but i don't care, look at it!
(ok i deleted the picture because people keep coming to my blog because of it)

my fish hjerb was previously eating very unenthusiastically but now i have starved him twice for possibly 4 days, upon which he subsequently ate like a normal greedy fish each time.

movie review - doctor zhivago

hmm, i don't know about the inherent condoning of adultery but whatever. russia is cold, furry hats seem awesome, how does one resuscitate an iodine-drinking suicide attempt with a length of rubber tubing?