2009 A.D.

2008 has been a horrific and hopeful year. We've seen Chinese manufacturers save on production costs in exchange for lives — again. The FDA seems to be growing a spine for once. The Olympics were amazing. Zhang Yimou's opening and closing ceremonies were fitting. Michael Phelps — I doubt no one will be able to break his record. The U.S. is still fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. Finally, 2008 will be remembered in the U.S. as a historic year in politics: One serious female contender for the presidency; one not-so-serious female contender for the vice presidency; the oldest presidential candidate; and the first black man elected to the U.S. presidency.

I'm not big on new year resolutions since I celebrate 2 new years every year (which is as wonderful as it sounds). It would seem weird to have two sets of resolutions within weeks of each other. Yet I'm sentimental enough to suggest improvements to myself around the first new year's eve. So in no particular order here I go:

Follow my passions.
Improve my cooking and writing skills.
Simplify my life.

That's it. Happy new year!

Tags: life, news, 2008

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The Best of 2008

Let's start with the event of the year: Sen. Barack Obama being elected as president! I knew that I'd see this happen during my lifetime, but I was never sure when. It's good to know that it occurred before I became 30. Now I'm 1 for 3 with presidential elections.

I enjoy making and reading these end-of-the-year lists since they often serve multiple purposes. The first is that they are a record of the American cultural zeitgeist. What did the critics enjoy and what did the general public enjoy? Where do I fall in this spectrum? Most hip-hop has been lacking this year. I don't follow the blues, jazz, country, metal, or R&B too closely or at all.

I think back to David Foster Wallace's introduction for the 2007 edition of the Best American Essays. He talked about Total Noise and Deciders (his caps) and what it meant to be a responsibly informed adult in the U.S. nowadays. He argued that it's impossible to read every published essay in the U.S. as a precursor to deciding on what's the "best." All any of us can hope to do is to be intelligent enough to know what we don't know and to approach such personal ignorance with a sense of humility so that we may begin to improve ourselves. Wallace's revelation echoes of Socrates, Mengzi, and the Buddha. I can only hope that I have been able to explore and map my own ignorance with these lists.

Movies
I haven't watched that many movies since August thanks to my job at the Daily Wildcat, but many of the movies I have watched have been great overall. However, there was a clear, definite winner.

Best movie: WALL-E
How brave is it of Pixar to take a chance on starting a movie with a 30-minute opening sequence with no dialogue? And with a big budget, "mainstream," animated film, no less. Beautiful animation, a story full of satire and playfulness, WALL-E boasts some great moments of humanity from characters made of pixels. I would even go so far and say that this movie is near flawless.

Next best movie: The Dark Knight
Another great movie that provides the new standard for superhero movies to come, and a good example of how make a better sequel. Christopher Nolan's version of Batman hits all the right notes: Bruce Wayne's conflict between his civilian life and his life as Batman; supervillains; gadgetry; and so on. Yet the movie transcends previous superhero movies in that the situations are grounded in situations that not only test Batman's sense of morality but also those in Batman's life such as Jim Gordon, Alfred Pennysworth, and Harvey Dent.

Best movie reissued this year: Chungking Express (Criterion Edition)
OK, so the special features aren't all that special, which is surprising since Criterion usually does a great job in this area. But the movie still holds up really well after all these years.

Other notable movies: Iron Man, Hellboy & the Golden Army,

Music
I've been trying to catch up on all the music released since the summer. Thankfully, many of the year's best albums have been spread throughout the seasons rather being unloaded during the fall and winter, which was the norm in recent years.

Albums (in no particular order)
- Hercules & Love Affair - Hercules & Love Affair
- Jamie Lidell - Jim
- Lil Wayne - Tha Carter III
- Lykke Li - Youth Novels
- M83 - Saturdays = Youth
- Quiet Village - Silent Movie
- Q-Tip - The Renaissance
- Santogold - Santogold
- She & Him - Volume One
- Sigur Ros - Incredibly Long Title
- Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend

Songs (in no particular order)
- Vampire Weekend - Oxford Comma
- Shelby Lynne - I Only Want To Be With You
- Santogold - L.E.S. Artistes
- The Roots - Rising Down
- Portishead - The Rip
- Estelle - American Boy (feat. Kanye West)
- Hercules & Love Affair - Blind
- Sigur Ros - Gobbledigook
- The Juan Maclean - Happy House

Happy House - The Juan Maclean

Books
This is somewhat new for me. I've always been lifelong voracious reader and the greater availability of a faster Internet connection has translated to many hours spent reading multiple online publications. Yet reading an article on a computer screen cannot compare to the tactile experience of reading something in my hands. The weight, texture, and even the smell of paper held in my hands is an experience that cannot be replicated with metal and electricity. (Sorry Kindle.) In spite of a shrinking publishing industry, a global economic depression in which we have yet to see the bottom and numerous cultural items that demand our attention, I don't think book reading will see a great decline in my lifetime. What may decline are the venues through which new writing may disappear, a different issue altogether. With that said, here are my book discoveries and delights of the year:

How Doctors Think by Jerome Groopman
A great look into how doctors think, how they make mistakes in their thinking, and the consequences of these cognitive errors and assumptions.
In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
A companion book to The Omnivore's Dilemma, Pollan distills nutrition advice into 3 simple tenets while providing the layout of the battle (and collusion) between business and nutrition.
Usagi Yojimbo Volumes 1-8 by Stan Sakai
Following the adventures of a ronin rabbit, Stan Sakai's comic book series is tasty melange of heroism, history, culture, and mythology.
Batman: The Killing Joke by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland
Bolland's recoloring of his collaboration with Moore adds to the tense, occasional banal atmosphere of the story. Great ending.
Doom Patrol Volumes 1-3 by Grant Morrison and various artists
People have talked about the deconstruction of the superhero, but few have carried it out to the same extent as Grant Morrison. "Fighting" a living painting was the most normal "villain" that the Doom Patrol faced in these volumes.
De/Compositions by W.D. Snodgrass
Speaking of deconstructions, a chance discovery at the university library yielded this collection of poems compiled and reinterpreted by Snodgrass. His versions of poems from renown poets demonstrate that the parts can indeed be greater than the whole. It also reveals the importance of editing.
Modern English Grammar by Bryan A. Gardner
Which brings me to this selection. Less repressive than Fowler but better than Follet, Gardner's approach to usage and grammar makes for a entertaining read, even if you don't care all that much about grammar. The mini-essays sprinkled throughout the text are interesting discussions into what makes English English. This book, and the following, proved invaluable during my time as the Daily Wildcat's copy chief.
On Writing Well (30th Anniversary Edition) by William Zinsser
A man who claims William Strunk and E.B. White as direct influences, Zinsser brings verve to his pages in his ongoing quest to perfect his writing. Reading his prose alone is a lesson well served on how to write simply and carefully.

Tags: music, movies, politics, 2008, books

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Reading white noise in America

I've been on a literary kick lately. I've been cutting my way through the National Book Critics Circle's blog, Critical Mass, semi-regularly since discovering it a few months ago. (They have such an awkward name for a literary organization.) What got me over there was a review of a book on book reviewing (yes) written by Gail Pool, Faint Praise: The Plight of Book Reviewing in America (via Bookslut, also a good blog covering parts of the literary world). There's a good essay/review of Pool's book here.

There's also NEA's grim report on reading habits in the USA and Ursula Le Guin's sobering response in Harper's Magazine (subscribers only unfortunately).

The NEA's report seems much more pessimistic than it should be. And I think Le Guin is right in her suspicions about the report's so-called decline in reading. She points out that there have been factors contributing to the current state of reading habits, chief among them is the social aspect. During what she calls the "century of the book" (1850-1950):

Literacy was not only the front door to any kind of individual economic and class advancement; it was an important social activity. The shared experience of books was a genuine bond.

This experience consisted of a private and, more importantly, a public aspect wherein people talked with each other about what they read. Then there's this great quote:

Books are social vectors, but publishers have been slow to see it. They barely even noticed book clubs until Oprah goosed them. But then the stupidity of the contemporary, corporation-owned publishing company is fathomless: they think they can sell books as commodities.

Le Guin notes that until recently (a decade or three?), most major publishing houses and bookstores were happy with what might be called mid-sellers, books that had steady sales over the years while in print, with the occasional bestseller to help finance the mid-sellers and smaller imprints. Having annual flat sales was not seen as an anathema on the industry. Once restrictions on mergers were lightened or disappeared altogether, the major publishing houses and chain bookstores began to be run by profit- and growth-minded executives who did not care about the quality of their stock nor their backlists. (Sadly, there are many parallels here with the music and comic book industries.)

The rest of the essay is great, though I have some problems with some of the comparisons Le Guin makes, especially regarding some of the unique qualities of books over other media.

In any case, this all seems symptomatic of my generation and the ones that follow at my heels: we have to learn how to make decisions about what information we take in and how to process the information before us. Critical thinking skills are probably the most important thing we all need to learn in this and every century.

Happy New Year!

Am I late? Or not? I like having two new years every year - a good excuse to eat good food each time. I've made resolutions that I won't share here, though they're more like long-term and short-term goals made more concrete. Hope you all have been good to each other over the holidays and that it was abundant with tasty food and lovely company.

I still have irregular access to the Internet so postings will happen whenever I have the opportunity. However, I am working on a few book reviews at the moment, and there is the ever present news.

In the meantime, here's a shortlist in no particular order of singers and bands who put out some great music in 2007:

LCD Soundsystem
Feist
Suzanne Vega
White Shoes & Couples Company
Ted Leo & the Pharmacists
M.I.A.
Burial
Roisin Murphy
Jens Lekman
White Stripes
St. Vincent
Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings
Sally Shapiro
The National
Radiohead
Kanye West
Justice
Iron & Wine
Modest Mouse
Electrelane
Dethklok
Arcade Fire
Anoushka Shankar & Karsh Kale
Blonde Redhead
The Field
Battles
Caribou
New Pornographers
Simian Mobile Disco