Post-postmodernism Sighting #426

Found in Pitchfork Media's #56 entry for Best 100 Records of 2000-2004, #56 being The Postal Service's "Give Up". The writer is Tom Breihan.

"Give Up sounds like that scene from season one of "The O.C." where Seth jumps up on Summer's kissing-booth table and demands that she stop ignoring him and kiss him in front of everyone. It's the sound of a hyper-articulate emo dork pulling his head out of his ass and staring the outside world straight in the face, an emo album that dares to be something other than emo."

To wit, PPM personified is that "hyper-articulate emo dork pulling his head out of his ass and staring the outside world straight in the face."

Mood: Cautiously optimistic

Met the quota with little difficulty this morning. It cut into my poem-writing time, and I suppose I’m still wrestling with time management even after lo all of these years. But GG is benefitting from a couple of experiments I’m trying out. Two main characters are stuck in Hamptons traffic and I’m taking the advice of many a fiction instructor and using the car as a crucible for them to confront their day, their responsibilities, each other, themselves, et cetera ad nauseum. I’m enjoying the process of bending the rules of reality—playing with time so that even though they are in a rush to get somewhere they still must pass the time. Time in its linear sense is somewhat suspended for the duration of this scene. So far it’s all dialogue. That’s promising: usually I have a tin ear when it comes to dialogue.

I must leave the house now. But listen to Animal Collective’s “Did You See the Words” on repeat and drink a Sam Adams too quickly and you too won’t fret that fact.

Things To Get To Know And Love

o the film Shopgirl.

o the Swedish band The Shout Out Louds.

o the Brooklyn band Animal Collective.

o the Chicago post-rock supergroup The Sea and Cake.

o the new Rick Rubin-produced album "12 Songs" by Neil Diamond. (I'm feeling a bit guilty for perpetuating / buying into the corporate coopting of more organic-in-origin type socialization sites such as the [admittedly youngish & silly] MySpace - but you get to listen to the whole damn album and that's what it's all about after all.)

Nick Hornbyish thoughts of Top 5 lists and such have been recurring in my mind fairly frequently. One of those characters had the theory and strong belief that you are what you like, and if you and another person like the same items, you'll get along with each other. Clearly oversimplified and naive. But there has always been a longstanding suspicion, a secret personal assurance even, that the "you are what you like" idea was onto something halfway profound. "You are *why* you like what you like" seems a useful adjustment, even if it is grammatical stretch.