Month: December 2005

It’s not too late to buy a wedding present for Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau. Thank heavens they registered at Macy’s! Makes buying that perfect gift so much easier.
(If those names don’t ring a bell, go here.)

One of America’s strangest musical figures: Eden Ahbez. Here’s a fan page, and here’s some great old video of the man with Nat King Cole. (Found via The Sounds of Monsterism Island CD.)
Somewhat related (in that it’s a partial explanation for the rapid success of Ahbez’s one hit song, “Nature Boy”): The Petrillo recording bans.
Somewhat related (in that it’s a CD I’ve been listening to recently): Dutch Rare Groove, a compilation of Netherlands funk. (It’s a lot better than you’re thinking.)
Somewhat related (in that it’s about ’60s and ’70s music from unexpected places): The complete catalogue of Sublime Frequencies. Would make an excellent Christmas present for the crazy person in your life.
Somewhat related (in that it’s about strange central Europeans): Germany or Florida, in which you, the reader, attempts to determine whether a bizarre occurrence happened in Stuttgart or Sarasota.
And finally, somewhat related (in that it’s about music both great and strange): My fave label, Stones Throw, has posted a streaming hour-long mix of holiday music, assembled by the great Peanut Butter Wolf himself. Some greatness (the buttery “Christmas Will Really Be Christmas” by Lou Rawls, the early ’90s Jeep beats of K. Nock, the Free Design’s “Close Your Mouth (It’s Christmas),” Caetano Veloso singing “In The Hot Sun Of A Christmas Day” — how very southern hemisphere), some lameness (“Christmas” by the still unlistenable Beat Happening), and some strangeness (the great old skool Christmas raps like “Seasons Greetings,” “Seven Days of Kwanzaa” by new label signee Georgia Anne Muldrow, the reggae “Broke at Christmas” — and last-minute guest appearances by Phil Spector and Esquivel).

The NYT on yawn contagion. A scientist argues that the fact that you want to yawn when others around you do is a sign of your empathy. More empathetic people yawn more often.
I don’t buy it. I’m sticking with my own longheld theory, first developed when I was about 12. To wit: Yawning’s main side effect is that it increases blood flow (and, with it, the flow of oxygen) to the brain. More blood flow increases thinking ability.
So, given the fact that you want to yawn when your neighbor does, there must be something about witnessing a yawn — or thinking about a yawn — that requires greater blood flow to the brain. My conclusion: A yawn must be the deepest, most profound thing a human can contemplate. Merely being confronted with the mental concept overtaxes the brain, rendering its current level of oxygen too low to contemplate such profundities — which then necessitates a yawn to bring the system full circle.
It seemed like a cool idea when I was 12, and I’m sticking to it.

Here’s my story from today’s paper: “The Wilmer-Hutchins schools have lost the final appeal of their death sentence.”

Here’s my column from today’s paper, on the subject of fake homeschoolers. (AP style requires that word to be “home-schoolers” in print, but I say kill the hyphen. It’s my blog, damn it!)

You may not have noticed the Nigerian plane crash over the weekend, but I sure as hell did. It was a Sosoliso Airlines plane, and I flew Sosoliso for two vaguely harrowing flights in April.
They were between Lagos and Enugu, the “Coal City State” in the southeast where I was doing some reporting on Nigerian Christianity. The planes didn’t seem particularly trustworthy; the interiors looked like they hadn’t been cleaned in a while, and I seem to remember a random wire dangling unfortunately from the ceiling. Even less inspiring, the sides of the plane sported a big “Macedonian Airlines” insignia. Apparently, this plane was a castoff from Macedonia. Again, not inspiring confidence.
But hey, I survived.

August: Granta for sale. October: Granta sold, to my new favorite 43-year-old Swede with a PhD in Estonian anthropology and a milk-carton fortune.
I’ve written about my affection for Granta before. And even though it’s known largely for debuting promising authors of fiction, my love comes mainly on the nonfiction side of the register. As editor Ian Jack writes in this retrospective, about the magazine’s earliest manifesto: “[It] speaks from a different age, when ‘literature’ was confined to fiction, the literary essay, and poetry. The paradox is that it was Granta, through [editor Bill] Buford’s early championing of forms such as the travel account, the memoir, and reportage, which did so much to expand the idea of what ‘literature’ could be or do.”
I hate the word “reportage.” It stinks of Gallic pretension, and presumes a sort of artistic reserve above plain old plebe “reporting.” But Buford and Granta did a lot to make my occasional literary aspirations conceivable.
In other news: Buy Vincent Gallo’s sperm — the racism’s free! And the Go! Team live on KEXP. “Ladyflash” is a particular standout.

Know your Smurfs. I bet you don’t know the full story of Smurfette. O, dark minx!

Celebrities playing table tennis. Sometimes, it’s just what it sounds like.

Congrats to my old high school buddy Anthony for the publication of his first book.
Cool band of the day: Dengue Fever. Aside from being named for one of my very favorite tropical diseases, they’re a self-proclaimed mix of surf music, ’60s Cambodian pop, and Ethiopian music. Their album sounds supercool — loungy, but with the sort of druggy haze that Ethiopian music gives you.
The last time I wrote about Ethiopian music here, I said this about Getatchew Mekurya: “Picture a Quentin Tarantino movie whose climactic scene features John Travolta nervously making an opium deal in the back room of some Turkish bath. This would be the soundtrack.” Move the opium deal from Istanbul to a back alley near The Quiet American‘s Continental Hotel and you’ve got Dengue Fever.
Finally, speaking of Graham Greene, I remember why I love The Super Friendz so much every time their song “Machine Green” pops up on the iPod. Gotta love those lyrics:
So tell me, who’s your favourite author? Mine’s Graham Greene
He started with the start and kept his sentences lean