Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Special Topics in Calamity Physics features the Epic Tale of one Blue van Meer. Full of words like "Timberlaked" and "paninied" (as in sandwiched) and oddly capitalized Special Events as well as endless numbers of book quotations and citations (see The Book of Books and Their Citations, Torchlite Publishers, 1989), this book is entertaining and insightful for most of its 700 plus pages.

Blue van Meer is a remarkably unique voice emerging from the pen of Marissa Pessl (who is from Ashville BTW). Not unlike other young, plucky, wiser-than-their-years heriones of late (see Juno, 2007), Blue is presented with a much-larger-than-normal slice of life's problems in her senior year of high school in Stockton, N.C. This book confidently creates its own world with memorable characters and slowly entraps you into wanting to know all the unexpectedly conspiratorial details behind the murder of a teacher at Blue's elite private school.

To begin quoting this book is to quote the whole thing but here are a few to tide you over until you can read it for yourself:

"Denial is like Versailles; it isn't the easiest thing to maintain."

"Very few people realize, there's no point chasing after answers to life's important questions," Dad said once in a Bourbon Mood. "They all have fickle, highly whimsical minds of their own. Nevertheless. If you're patient, if you don't rush them, when they're ready, they'll smash into you. And don't be surprised if afterwards you're speechless and there are cartoon tweety birds chirping around your head."

On walking while being tipsy: "I stood up and tried to make my way to the door, but my legs felt as if they were being asked to measure the universe."

On being on a stakeout: "We were stationed somewhere, oceans from home, afraid of things unseen. Leulah was shell-shocked, back straight as a flagpole, her eyes magnetized to the door. Jade was the senior officer, crabby, worn-out and perfectly aware nothing she said could comfort us so she only reclined her seat, turned on the radio and shoved potato chips into her mouth. I sort of Vietnamed too. I was the cowardly homesick one who ends up dying unheroically from a wound he accidentally inflicts upon himself that squirts blood like a grape Capri Sun."

"If that weren't enough to knock the wind out of me, she had to go entirely Southern Gothic, dragging the Devil and his grin into it, and whenever someone with a fudgethical Southern accent said devil, one inevitably felt they knew something one didn't-as Yam Chestley wrote in Dixiecrats (1979), 'The South knows two things through and through: cornbread and Satan' (p. 166)."

Picturing the World

Ackland Art Museum has a very powerful and oft-times disturbing exhibit of photographs by North Carolina's photo-journalists. A good photograph like any good art has a power to move. Some of these photographs not only are beautiful they can be a firm kick in the solar plexus. Photo-journalist Adrea Bruce's pictures of the Iraq war are not only beautiful they are deeply moving. A powerful image of a child crying after the accidental shooting of her parents by American soldiers is particularly poignant. Janet Jarman's series of photos following a Mexican family's odyssey in America tells the tale better than any words on paper could. Their initial condition, their aspiration to come to America. The cultural and class divide once they get here and their ultimate failure to secure an economic foothold here. There is a particularly telling picutre of the young Mexican girl Marisol staring over the fence of her new American backyard at a little American girl of the same age. The American Girls' parents have forbidden her to play with Marisol, and yet they meet at the fence, the great cultural divide of class and economics. Not all the pictures tell sad stories. Often you would not know a photo represented a harsh reality based on it content and composition. In this case its well worth it to read the explanations and enjoy the art even though it might unsettle the mind.

The Future is so Meta: DJ Spooky at UNC

Friday afternoon in the Great Hall at UNC there was a lecture / performance by DJ Spooky a.k.a. Paul Miller. Paul is the master of the cultural remix and its most eloquent advocate. His talk began with the idea that modern artists, writers, composers and technical people began fragmenting and segmenting and remixing culture at the beginning of the 20th century. He cited the evolution of collage, stop motion photography and other technologies for developing what he called the "photoshop quality" of mind. That mind is a layered, changable, multi-faceted experience and the 20th century has been mostly about simultaneous fragmented experience.


He also explained that disciplines that used to be considered separate (writing, composing, art) are being increasingly blurred and unified by software. Combine this trend with the amount of data we can collect and store digitally in the 21st century and you have a deeply experiential art/remix culture blurring the lines of art and creative disciplines. Paul offered that historically art has been valued for its scarcity (it was all originals or limited copies)and that the future of art was its endless digital availability (as its all copies). He created his own remix experiment by giving everyone one of 5 remix cds he made in different genres (classic pop, jazz, reggae, etc...) He encouraged us to burn them for friends and remix them crossing up the genres.

Kimya Dawson - Midtown Dickens - Paleface - Angelo Spencer

Bull City HQ was the location for a night of mostly upbeat, very loose, and occasionally dare I say endearing, music. This bill was almost upstaged by its location. Located on a somewhat delapidated block of North Mangum street the Bull City HQ is an unusual venue at best. Obviously a center for a free bike program a makeshift art gallery and now a music space this quirky space is nestled between storefront churches (one of which is named "The True Way Church of God in Christ Jesus"). So it was here with a packed house that this group of mostly acoustic outsiders performed.



First up was Midtown Dickens, and with the crowd as thick as it was (did I mention I have no pictures of the bands?) it was hard to see the performers but the performance was intimate and easily heard. It had the aura of being at someones house and they suddenly decided to put on an impromptu show of some kind. Playing guitars, banjos, drums, trumpets and singing their throats sore I found the raggedy string band charm of this group to be very musical and light hearted.

Next up was Paleface, a duo that noted they were old friends and touring mates of Kimya Dawson. Their sound was not unlike an unplugged flat-duo-jets at times. Starting off softer and ending on a somewhat harsher set of songs, the performance was accomplished and emphatic.




Angelo Spencer was the penultimate performance and left alot to be desired. While the crowd enjoyed his thrashing electric noodlings Angelo managed to forget his lyrics, stop his songs and beg for mercy. He was ultimately a crowd pleaser but this left me strolling outside to take pictures until he was done.

Kimya Dawson is some kind of miracle. The perfect embodiment of the indie zeitgeist of the 2000's with her unkempt hair and her sweet and offbeat intelligent lyricism all paired with that crackly charming croon of hers. She rattled off more words in a single song than a dictionary and most of them were insightful and funny. Her material had a somewhat narrative sense to it - if you are a zen buddhist. Throwing away more good metaphors than Bob Dylan she was also very entertaining in-between songs.

E-Reader Comparison

Ok, so being someone who reads alot and somewhat of an early adopter... I've been reading ebooks for almost 4 years. My first E-reader has been the Rocket ebook reader 1100. This has been my 2 lb. trusty companion for reading all kinds of content from the internet and ProjectGutenburg.org ebooks and my purchased (and often converted ebooks) in .REB format. (The proprietary format for this reader.) This reader has had many commercial incarnations (gemstar etc...) but it's almost the same in every one. Cosmetic improvements here and there but on the whole the same unit.

The REB1100




Pros: Backlit for reading at night. On screen tapping for functions (limiting the number of buttons). Adjustable type size. Hyperlinking in documents. Can make content from standard HTML. Search function for documents. Built in dictionary for looking up words by tapping them on the screen.

Cons: Backlighting strategy makes it unusable in daylight situations. Glare from reader glass is an additional problem. This thing is kinda heavy (2 lbs!). Lasts about 20 hours before needing a charge. Boot up time can be long if there are lots of books installed(3 minutes). Bare-bones management software that does not generate content. (Content generated from 3rd party tools)


What I bought recently was the Sony PRS 500 reader. The even newer PRS 505 is the slightly more elegant cousin to this one. The Sony Reader is an elegant all metal E-Reader mostly meant for just that. It's lightweight form-factor and easy to read type make for an excellent reading experience. Finding and formatting content for this reader has proven to be a challenge albeit not insurmountable.

The PRS 500




Pros: Very lightweight (1/2 a pound). Adjustable text sizes. Instant boot up times. Multi-featured main page which stores books sorted by Date, Author, and Name. All bookmarks are stored in a central bookmark section of the main page as well as being stored in the respective individual books. Plays Mp3s. Displays Photographs. LRS book format compresses data efficiently. Sharp text readability. E-Ink technology gives clarity to text and requres no power to view a page (only to change it). E-Ink technology and no-glare glass makes the PRS 500 clearly readable in full sunlight. Rarely needs charging.

Cons: No search function. No internal dictionary function. Bare-bones management software that does not generate content. (Content generated from 3rd party tools)
No backlight for reading with the lights out or in shady corners.

I can say this is still an upgrade inspite of the missing features from my old REB1100. The readability and weight reduction alone make the PRS 500 superior. The Sony Reader also came with a really nice folio cover. Its about the size and thickness of a DVD case with the cover attached to the reader.

My Favorite Albums Released in 2007

1. Josh Ritter - The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter
2. Feist - The Reminder
3. Voxtrot - Voxtrot
4. The National - Boxer
5. St. Vincent - Marry Me
6. Field Music - Tones of Town
7. Great Northern - Trading Twilight for Daylight
8. Elliott Smith - New Moon
9. Wilco - Sky Blue Sky
10. Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

Honorable Mentions: Soundtrack - Across the Universe, Ryan Adams - Easy Tiger, Stars of Track and Field - Centuries Before Love and War

Blasts from the Past that found their way into my iPod: Dire Straits - Dire Straits, Jackson Browne - Late for the Sky, Joni Mitchell - Blue

What a wierd year for me finding music. I'm sure your top 10 is very different than mine. If you post yours let me know.

Into the Wild

Sean Penn's thoughtful, beautiful-to-look-at tour de force is well worth your time.
Questioning society, authenticity, and the search for the heart in life, this film and its protagonist grab you by the throat. Shot in DV, 8mm and videotape for various effect, "Into the Wild" is also interesting to look at. The acting of Emile Hirsch is oscar-worthy. The dieting to achieve the physical effect of looking like the ematiated Christopher McCandless at the end of his life is doubly effective due to the superb acting on Hirschs' part. William Hurt is perfectly cast as the overbearing father and Vince Vaughn turns in a strong performance as the midwest farmer Wayne Westerberg, proving he can act beyond the buddy picture. Hal Holbrook shows up deep in the spiritual heart of this movie to offer some hard-won wisdom to the young Alex Supertramp.