Monday, June 20, 2011

Mine for yours: A mid-year round up of the early candidates for my year-end Best of 2011 Top Ten Lists

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Music/albums (in no order)

1. Iceage New Brigade Dais



2. Liturgy Aesthethica Thrill Jockey



3. Fucked Up David Comes to Life Matador



4. Bill Orcutt A New Way to Pay Old Debts Mego



5. Robert Pollard Lord of the Birdcage GbV



6. Tim Hecker Rave Death, 1972 Kranky



7. Brigitte Fontaine L'un n'empêche pas l'autre Polydor



8. Tyler the Creator Goblin XL Recordings



9. Wire Red Barked Tree Pink Flag



10. Marcus Schmickler Palace of Marvels (queered pitch) Mego



11. Locrian The Crystal World Utech Records





Books/fiction (in no order)

1. Blake Butler There Is No Year Harper Perennial



2. Emilio Lascano Tegui On Elegance While Sleeping Dalkey Archive



3. Patrick DeWitt The Sisters Brothers Ecco



4. Lynne Tillman Someday This Will Be Funny Red Lemonade



5. Stacey Levine The Girl with Brown Fur Starcherone/Dzanc



6. Justin Taylor The Gospel of Anarchy Harper Perennial



7. Mike Young Look! Look! Feathers Word Riot



8. Scott McClanahan Stories V! Holler Presents



9. Edouard Leve Suicide Dalkey Archive



10. Michael Kimball Us Tyrant Books


Other than fiction: Elaine Equi Click and Clone (Coffee House), Dodie Bellamy the buddhist (Publication Studio), Colin Herd too ok (BlazeVOX), Mark Leidner The Angel in The Dreams of Our Hangover (Sator), Alice Notley Culture of One (Penguin), Tim Dlugos A Fast Life (Nightboat Books), Oscar Tuazon I Can't See (Paraguay Press), Thomas Bernhard My Prizes: An Accounting (Knopf), ...




Film (in no order)

1. Terrence Malick Tree of Life



2. Ryan Trecartin Any Ever



3. Christophe Honore Les Bien-aimés



4. Woody Allen Midnight in Paris



5. Apichatpong Weerasethakul Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives



6. Bela Tarr The Turin Horse





Visual art (in no order)

1. Aernout Mik Communitas Jeu de Paume, Paris



2. Ryoji Ikeda Test Pattern Centre Pompidou, Paris



3. General Idea Retrospective Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris



4. Anish Kapoor Leviathan Grand Palais, Paris



5. 'Gone With the Wind' Ravens Row London



6. Paul Thek Diver: A Retrospective Whitney Museum, NYC/Hammer Museum, LA





Sites (in no order)

HTMLGIANT
UbuWeb
North of Onhava
Art Fag City
Bright Stupid Confetti
If we don't, remember me.
Haunt World
Haunted House Association
Only Secrecy
Joe Brainard's Pajamas (The Sequel)
espresso bongo
Art Slant
every time a policeman gets shot i throw a party
The Evening Redness in the West
Chungking Espresso
Silliman's Blog
pantaloons
Fanzine
We Who Are About to Die
50 Watts
senses of cinema
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p.s. Hey. So, yeah, I would love to hear some of your favorite things of 2011 so far in return, if you're game. Thanks. ** 'Stoopid Slapped Puppies', Nick, hey dude, you too, it's a honor, it's a pleasure! ** Bill, Hi, Bill. Thanks for caring. ** David Ehrenstein, Hey. I'm pretty easy when it comes to horror films, but you noted some of the very best, yeah. ** Steevee, It was the production design on that Miike that I was reading poz stuff about mostly. The Bogdanovich sounds like it's worth revisiting. It was so hated at the time I saw it originally that I'm not sure I even saw it clearly. Too bad about the Perry doc. I'm sure I'll see it at some point if not in a real rush. Thanks a lot for your report. Much appreciated! Oh, I don't know that Jamie Woon record, no. The James Blake didn't do all that much for me, but the Woon sounds more promising what with Burial's involvement and all. Okay, I find and stream some. Thanks a lot for that tip too! ** Empty Frame, Hey, man. Yeah, I saw that someone uploaded that old video of me. Shot in the mid-80s, I think. Part of a series called 'Poetry Spots' featuring a bunch of poets each reading one poem. NYC TV channels were given them and asked to drop them into commercial breaks when they had a spare 30 or whatever seconds. A few did. I accidentally saw mine once late at night. Makes a lot of sense: your ideas about the use of the text, and, as Postit pointed out, that one you described that made someone cry sounds powerful, for sure. Ah, 'A Sentimental Education' is great in bed. Enjoy. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Yes, thank you a ton for the Cortazar post. It's fantastic. I've assembled it, used the great images you sent and added a few others and the book covers, and I'll give you the launch date soon. I really appreciate it. Of course I'm really happy that 'Tree of Life' blew you away too. I think I'm just about ready for a second viewing. I know what you mean about the ending, but, in the moment at least, there was something courageous in a weird way about his decision there that made it work for me, and it made me cry, and it's hard to argue with that, but the ending is something I'm particularly interested in re-seeing and thinking about again. ** Bernard Welt, Hi, B. I'm actually going to see that recent horror film 'Insidious' later today. It just opened here, and I read some interesting reports on it a while back. That Ives play sounds quite cool, of course. I'll see if there's a videoed squib of it somewhere. ** Postitbreakup, I shook Louis Garrel's hand, but that's it so far. I was going to say you could put that troubled story in the blog workshop to get advice, but, hm, that might count as a publication? I'm not sure what qualifies as a publication or not these days. My week ended okay, I guess. This week involves a bunch of work on that festival that Gisele and I are going to help curate, and I want to get started on the text for the big maze piece, but first Gisele needs to decide where the robots are going to be located in the labyrinth. I think she's going to do that this week. The dummy text thing is going along but slowly. It's always slow at this very early stage. Thank you for asking, man. Holy shit, ha ha, I won a blogging excellence prize! And my prize seems to have brought his favorite dildo with him. Well, whatever makes him happy. Iow, thank you, Josh! Everyone, according to Postitbreakup, I seem to have won a special Tony Award for blogging excellence. You can see my prize as well some sort of curious trinket that he is holding in his hand here. Thanks to all of you for making this possible! ** Sypha, Hi, James. Crazy wealth of youth pix, nice. You looked like you, or like the you I know, even at a wee age. I think most kids don't so much. I don't think my kid pix are very identifiable, for instance. Everyone, hit this link and go check out a generous slideshow of pix of our beloved Sypha at much younger ages. Don't miss the Halloween shark costume photos, if you know what's good for you. ** Bollo, Hi, J. Why were you in a tiny town. But then again, why not? Yury has a work vacation coming up, and we're assessing vacation spots, tiny towns included, although most of them have a castle in them or something to counteract the tininess. Agree with you very much about Thomas's 'Hospital' of course. I haven't gotten any Planingtorock quite yet, but I think I'll fix that today. ** Thomas, Hey, man! I'm really glad you got to see 'The Weaklings' show, and thanks a whole lot for the kind words re: it. Undertones almost reunion gig, nice. Does the new guy try to fake Feargal's gargly vocals? You're going to make the trek to Oslo to see GbV! I can't go, much to my utter horror. And no news on a wished-for Euro tour. Damn. I'm going to want a very nice report on that, if you don't mind. My time in Oslo was literally spent either in a hotel or in a theater. Other than walking the streets in between them, I didn't do anything and have no recommendations other than the famous Black Metal Museum-slash-record store, which I didn't see for myself but which comes highly recommended from Stephen O'Malley and others. EuroHEEDFEST looks very sweet, and that's quite a nice cover of 'Don't Stop Now'. It teared me up a little. Holy fuck! I mean about the song with my poem in it. Wow! That's crazy, that's awesome! I just paused the p.s. long enough to listen to it once, and I really like it. It would be way up my alley even without me in it, if that makes any sense. I'm going to listen to it some more later, but, yeah, wow, thank you to say the least! That's amazing! Everyone. d.l. Thomas is in this very cool band called Plus, and they've recorded a new song that uses one of my poems -- specifically 'Private World' from this poem sequence called 'Tenderness of the Wolves' -- as the lyrics, and, yeah, it's pretty awesome, and you can hear it right here if you like. More thoughts when I've had to time to listen to it more with proper care, but, gee, thanks again so much, man! ** The Dreadful Flying Glove, Hey! Really good to see you! Thank you regarding my escort batch. Yes, Ex-Schoolboy's profile was kind of an amazing find. I'm glad your shit is getting sorted out. How is the project going? Was that part of the shit? D.l. _Black_Acrylic just bought a bike too. Something's in the air or on the road. Take care. ** Chris Cochrane, Hey, man. No, you don't need to use quotes or put a ' ... ' after the titles if you don't want to. I trust your instinct on that. Cool! Yeah, I've got one NYC or rather Brooklyn date confirmed. The day after that confirmed thing, I have to read in SF, so I guess I'll be there for a short bit before that. I'll let you know when all of that is sorted out. Obviously, I'd love to be there for the release party. So wish I could be there on Friday to stand on the sidelines vaguely lit and glowering with my text dangling loosely from one hand. ** _Black_Acrylic, Congrats on finishing the 24-hour Marclay clock watch, and I'm glad you guys got some quid for the herculean effort. Take it easy at first on the bike, obviously. I hopped on one in Utrecht for the first time in decades, and it all came back pretty quickly. But it wasn't raining or post-rain slick. ** Lord_s, Hey! The mighty Lord_s! A true pleasure to see you, man! I hope everything that's going on under cover of your lurking is going as splendidly as you could want. Any news anytime would be most welcome, and, in any case, check out the grin caused by your surfacing. Or, well, imagine it. ** Josh feola, Hey, Josh! Thanks so, so much for the weekend. Great post, and it has led me into a lot of interesting new work, and big gratitude to you for that. I'm picking up the new Wire today, and I'm excited to read your piece in it. Let me forefront the links in your comments. Everyone, re: Josh Feola's post about Yellow Tears, Carsick Cars, et. al. of this past weekend, I want to pass along some adds courtesy of him. Here he is to introduce them: 'i read an interesting review of "The Cult of Yellow Tears" where the listener deeply associates with an "implied interest in urolangia": here. ... [and] i produced a short video about a club in Beijing that incubated Carsick Cars and other bands in the same scene, with interviews and live footage. if you're interested you can stream it here.' I'm going to check out the article and video in just a bit. Thanks again so much, Josh. Really, really appreciated. ** Nb, Dude to you, dude! Has San Francisco unlocked you? Might I whisper a good old 'how the heck are you, man?' ** Brendan, Hey. I've played poker but not in a long time and not very well when I did. My fellow players said my face wasn't a good hiding place. Ballgame sounds very nice, yes. Even though the Dodgers are depressing the hell out of me, but then that's nothing new, I guess. But yeah. I think I'll be there on the 8th to 10th-ish. I need to buy my fucking plane tickets. ** Squeaky, Howdy, Squeaky! Always a pleasure most divine to have you here. What's up? ** Misanthrope, Georgey! That's some niece you've got there. Or are all nieces like that? Mine is still at the 'ga-ga' stage. Do parakeets have dicks? I guess they must. The wrestling stuff sounds awesome, duh. I have to go find a clip of an airborne Big Show. That's crazy talk. I don't know R-Truth. He's too new for me. Sounds like an old-school WWE narrative line. Interesting. ** Tender prey, Hey, Marc! Loveliness to see you, maestro. I can only imagine about that college work. Any particularly interesting papers? Thanks about the stack of heads, and for the news that people are transgressing the Five Years' castle-like door. I'm okay. Too busy, probably like you, but okay. Thank you so very kindly for just everything, Marc-ster! ** Right. It would be cool if you told each other and me what you've been liking a lot for the past six or so months, but no pressure. I'll check back in my usual style tomorrow. See you then.

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