secret comics

again with the announcements:

happy australia day**!  i'm sure they are celebrating by having summer when it's supposed to be winter.  also eating cadbury sweets like a bunch of lucky ex-colonial bastards.

also, happy feast of the coversion of st. paul!  and guess what?  a lot of the things you've heard about him are wrong.

**so australia day is january 26... it's still the 25th here but it's been the 26th there for like, hours or something.  it's at least 6:30 a.m. as i sit here listening to abc radio national from victoria.  melbourne i think.

happy new year, everybody!

welcome to the country

hell yeah.  the beatings are coming to austin - feb 21 at emo's!  a tuesday night show that i really do have every intention going to!  the missing tapes headline!  doors at 8, show starts at 10!  exclamation points all around!!  buy the new the beatings record.  the old ones too.  you have your instructions.  that is all.

after the debacle of missing them last sxsw, i am happy to report that guitar wolf are pressing on after the passing of billy wolf - touring even!  australia, but still.  hooray!

item!  wait.  i was thinking of something there for a minute.  actually i have been sort of... getting a lot of things done... for the past 20 minutes or so, so why not take a few minutes and just hammer something out poorly edited and stream of consciousness ish.  esque.  you know.  i have been wondering what happened to strange, tangential people lately.  e.g. friends' ex-girl/boyfriends, you know, people who were around for a few months then gone but were kind of pleasant while i briefly knew them -- i'm thinking of someone specific here who i'm not going to mention by name (duh) and i have a weird opposition to giving any personal details about.  why?  no idea.  but i'm thinking also of general folks who appear in your life and then sort of dissappear into the aether... are they doing ok?  are they having fun?  are things meaningful (see below) for them?  i hope so.  that's all, i guess.

also, tom posed the following big picture questions that i figured my smartset readership (hi tom!) could work on here.  he emailed it today and i felt a little bad for not getting back to him but i swear i did think on it today - a lot when i was eating my tacos for lunch.  my answers got very dark when they left the beans out of my veggie taco (rice only), then perked up when the chicken taco was pretty good.  well, it was ok.  ok, here goes:

1. What are the principal philosophical, existential questions?

   What questions are we all seeking the answer to in our own lives, whether doing it consciously or unconsciously? Example: we're all looking for purpose in life, so it could be said we're all seeking the answer to the question, "What is the meaning of life?", or at least, "What is my purpose in life?"

2. Can any of the questions be answered?

   Some questions might be easy to answer, others might be impossible. Some questions might have multi-part answers, layered answers depending on the precise meaning of the question, or might have answers that are purely individual. Because some questions might carry an "invisible" meaning that the words don't explicitly express, we've got the next question...

3. Can some of the questions not even be asked?

   Some questions might be impossible to phrase in a literal meaningful way. The true question might be purely a thing of nuance. Example: "What is the meaning of life?" probably shouldn't be answered with, "To become a hairdresser," although at an individual's junction that certainly might seem like their meaning of life.

happy last day of christmas!

I realize I am sinking into a particular oblivion where any "best of 2005" list I come up with will appeal to nobody - or nobody in particular anyway, including the people reading this.  Ah, well...

1. J.S. Bach - Sonatas and Partitas for Violin Solo (Gidon Kremer)
2. Bill Frisell - East/West
3. Jandek - Glascow Sunday
4. Bobo Stenson - Goodbye
5. Windy & Carl - The Dream House/Dedication to Flea
6. J.S. Bach - The Keyboard Concertos Volumes 1 and 2 (Angela Hewitt)
7. Thelonious Monk - Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall
8. Paul Motian - I Have The Room Above Her
9. Tie!   William Basinski - Watermusic/Watermusic II
           Alvin Lucier - Anthony Burr/Charles Curtis

The Lucier record came out like a month or so ago and I only picked it up like last week.  Still, it's hell of intense.  Overwhelming.  The Basinski records are completely amazing but only technically getting their first proper CD release (versus CR-R) release in 2005.

10. W.A. Mozart - Violin Sonatas, 1781 (Andrew Manze, violin and Richard Egarr, fortepiano)

I'm not sure what this has to do with anything, but then again... that's what this whole deal is for, right?

Honorable mentions should go to... hmm.  Keith Jarrett's Radiance was a fairly challenging solo piano record, I guess I have not given it the time and attention it deserves.  Not yet.  That can be on my 2006 to do list.  So let's call it 11.  Jandek's Khartoum was also very good.  Voice and acoustic guitar, pretty intense.  Tied for 11 maybe.  11.5.

I pretty disappointed by Steve Reich's You Are (Variations) .  Not terrible I guess, but not really, uh, very good.  Drag.

um, my computer is out of commission for now so don't expect any updates for a while.  maybe a week or two.  maybe longer.  maybe not.  i guess i'll go ahead and put up that top 10 of 2005 list, (sans a lot of) commentary i planning on including.