I'm very very very excited because today I got my hands on an advance copy of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. Neil Gaiman recently commently in his webjournal that he believes this to be the finest fantasy novel written in the last seventy years. I'll let you know...

And if you don't believe me about the Dark Materials... trust the words of Michael Chabon as written for the The New York Review of Books.

I've been meaning to create a link on the side to my friend Jeff's livejournal, Shelf Life. He talks about books a lot, which I like... and when he's not talking about books he's usually talking about his rescue greyhound, Dash... which I also like.

In a post today, he mentioned a conversation he and I had yesterday about Philip Pullman's Dark Materials Trilogy. I had read the first two books a couple of years ago but never got around to The Amber Spyglass, the final book. So, I recently read all three of them over the course of a week.

They are in serious contention for my favorite books ever. They're fucking brilliant and they completely transcend their classification as children's literature. I only wish such brilliant books had existed for me to read in my more tender years.

I wish I could claim to have come up with my clever "anti-Narnia" comment on my own, but it's something I read in an interview with Pullman on a website. But I think it's very true. Most kid lit tends to be rather cruel to children, there's often outright cruelty or a subtext of it. Not so in these books. The two children who are our lead characters are the most upright and moral characters in the story, which isn't to say that they're perfect or that they always make the right decisions.

Anyways... Dark Materials... parallel universes, Miltonian themes, dark matter, fallen angels, death in spades, witches, daemons(!!), moral uncertainty and characters who are so very human in that there are no evil or good characters. There are only people making choices and growing and learning and making mistakes and... oh for god's sakes... READ THEM!!!!

Ok... i'm a cranky son of a bitch. I admit it. I have a hard time meeting new people and making new friends. One of the benefits of the internet has been that I wind up becoming friends with people in rather odd ways. I met Mark through some round about blogging link up, but it was mainly cuz he talked about music that I liked in his blog. I got a message on one of the P2P services one day from a guy named Walter, who rapidly became one of my favorite people on this planet. Through Walter, I discovered P.J., a blogger with exquisite taste in music whose boyfriend just happened to be an ex-roomie of mine. And recently, I noticed that I was downloading a lot of music from a guy named Alexandr on Direct Connect. And then i randomly discovered his playlists of favorite songs on the net. So, I emailed him and we've built up a pretty decent friendship recently.

Yeah... it says a lot about me, I think, that all of these internet friendships are based on their musical tastes. Well, recently, the Direct Connect hub that Alexandr and I "hook up" on wend kablooey. And today I found a descendent of that hub and emailed Alex about it. He showed up in the hub in like five seconds. So... we start chatting... and he gives me a link to his Friendster profile, which leads me to his online journal. And I discover, that like Mark and Walter and PJ, Alex is a total babe...

I'm not sure what my point is... but, I think it's interesting that the 'net leads me to pretty decent friendships with incredibly cute, terribly stylish music fiends...

In case you needed proof... it's true that
dogs really do rock...

I've been meaing to make this post for a while... one of the more interesting features of iTunes is the Top 25 Most Played songs playlist. It forces you to see what you REALLY listen to, regardless of what you think your musical tastes are. So... here's my Top 25...

1. You Weren't There - Lene Marlin
2. Grey Day - Zoot Woman
3. Dice - Finley Quaye & Beth Orton
4. Am I Wry? No - Mew
5. Such Great Heights - The Postal Service
6. We Used to Be Friends - The Dandy Warhols
7. Slow - Kylie Minogue
8. Mica - Mew
9. Cherry Blossom Girl - Air
10. Take Me Out (Morgan Geist Reversion) - Franz Ferdinand
11. Obstacle 1 (Arthur Baker Remix) - Interpol
12. Elevator Love Letter - Stars
13. Pain Killer - Turin Brakes
14. Surfin' Atari - Console
15. Saliva - Mew
16. Lifelines (Console Remix) - A-Ha & Anneli Drecker
17. Hotel Parallel - Alpinestars
18. Clocks (Royksopp's Trembling Heart Remix) - Coldplay
19. Death to Death - Stars
20. NuSex City - Alpinestars
21. Fighter (Hani Remix) - Christina Aguilera
22. Making Music - Sophie Ellis Bextor
23. Home - Zero 7
24. Love Strikes - Eskobar
25. What She Wants - Felix da Housecat

Quite a few years ago, I was visiting Houston with my boyfriend of the time, Dave, and we stopped at the Bookstar at the corner of Westheimer and Alabama to browse. It's used to be one of my favorite bookstores, just because it's built inside an old movie theater.

While looking through the fiction new releases, I ran across a bookjacket that stopped me in my tracks. It was a beautiful, sort of fuzzy picture of cereal that looked like Fruit Loops. Picking the book up, I quickly realized that I had to buy the it. The title of the book was Mysterious Skin by Scott Heim. I was right to buy it. It became one of my favorite novels. And shortly after I read it, I made some comments about it on an
AOL message board (hey... i said it was QUITE A FEW years ago) which were read by Scott, who then sent me a really sweet email.

We struck up a pretty decent online friendship for a while, due to our overlapping interests in music, art, books and movies. But, as email correspondences do, it faded away over time.

Anyways, Greg Araki is making a movie of the book and I gottta say the trailer looks really promising. So, go buy the book already... (thanks to Jeff for the trailer link)

That's what just happening to run into two other bloggers on a random night out at the bars will do to your net traffic...

You heard it hear first... between Air, Geyster and Aloud, I think this mayh be the year of French pop... check out the great video for Sex and Sun by Aloud... wonderfully eighties inspired cheese...

I will never say one negative word about Anne Rice again. I just found out that she's put up a $5000 reward for information about the guys who attacked my friend Paul a couple of weeks ago. She's also used her celebrity to schedule an interview for the local ABC affiliate about the attack and about violence against gays in New Orleans. I believe it will be airing this Monday.

Paul has been through surgery twice as a result of the attack. He still has no vision in one of his eyes, but he can see light and colors now, so there is hope still.

There's going to be some sort of fundraiser for Paul's medical expenses at The Bourbon Pub on June 21st, but I don't know the details yet. NO/Aids Task Force is also administering the fund. As soon as I find out more info about all this, I'll post it here...

Well, Jonno can rest easier now.. I finally got around to watching Grey Gardens.

Brilliant... if I didn't already have a name for my blog, I think I'd call it Concentrated Ground, in honor of the movie...

Speaking of music in trailers... I am jonesing to see Garden State. An absolutely adorable trailer which fills me with curiosity about the movie...

The Movie-List Forums have become one of my favorite web resources, especially the forum I linked. I'm always driving myself crazy trying to figure out songs that are in movie trailers, even though I usually already have the song (among the 5000 songs I have in iTunes). The guys on this forum always have the answer.

GRRRR... I need this song like NOW. Erlend Oye rocks my happy heart. I can tell from the MP3s on their website that this is gonna be one of my favorite songs of the summer...

The Times Picayune, the local paper, ran an article today about the attack on my friend Paul.

Quick notes:

Currently Reading: His Dark Materials Trilogy by Philip Pullman

Currently Listening To: Kokomemedada - Komeda

One of my favorite blog's that I've been meaning to mention and add to my links is Fluxblog. It's an MP3 blog and Matthew, Mr Flux himself, has VERY good taste in music.

I've gotten scads of cool tunes from him and I'll be eternally greatful to him for that.

I'll also mention Losing My Edge, which I found through Fluxblog. It's a new MP3 blog, but it gets major kudos for the LCD Soundsystem inspired title.

Ok... so I've mentioned TV shows twice in the past two days.

I used to be absolutely addicted to television. I watched a ridiculous amount of it.

And then one day I decided that cable television was a luxury that I really couldn't afford anymore. It's ridiculously overpriced, IMO. And the reception that I get with bunny ears is pretty darn bad. So, I went cold turkey. And discovered that I really didn't miss it. It helped a lot that this was shortly after I moved to New Orleans, so I had new friends to hang out with and new places to explore. The only show I couldn't give up entirely was Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but a friend at work taped it for me every week.

And then came one of the greatest innovations of modern times... tv shows on DVD. Through the magic of DVD, I've watched the entire run of The Family Guy and most of Sex in the City. I watched ALIAS, The Sopranos, The Shield and 24 from the beginning. I've watched as much of OZ and Six Feet Under as they've released.

And then I discovered the next greatest innovation of modern times... Bit Torrent. There are crazy (lovely) people out there who tape tv shows every week and convert them to AVI or MPG files within an hour or so of that show airing. A few hours of downloading (usually while I'm sleeping) later, I have that show on my computer to watch.

So, I watch TV shows again. But, I watch them at my convenience. And there aren't that many that I watch. For the record.. here's what i do watch:

The Shield
The Sopranos
Six Feet Under
24
Alias
Queer as Folk

With their varying schedules, that's less than four hours a week of tv watching. I can live with that. And with one obvious exception, I think the shows I watch are pretty smart.

I wasn't very happy when ABC announced their fall tv schedule and I saw that Alias isn't going to come back until January. But I just watched the pilot for the show, Desperate Housewives, that's going to air in it's timeslot on Sunday nites until it returns and suddenly I'm not so upset anymore.

It's a very clever, slightly weird primetime soap opera geared towards smart adults instead of hip teens. It's one of those shows that I shouldn't like, but I do. Very clever writing, well filmed and just enough of a sardonic edge to make it work.

Of course, now I have to wait months to see another episode...

saintetienne.com has had a pretty big update.

You can register for their fanclub on the site now and forums are up and running. And it looks like that if you sign up quickly for the fanclub, they'll send you one of the Xmas 2003 CDs that they gave out at their December London show...

Housekeeping time...

I got rid of some crap over in the border (was anyone really translating my page into French on a regular basis?) and added three links to blogs. Those would be the first one and the last two.

Dave is, of course, THE EX. Heh... I'll always call him that. He's also one of my best friends in the world. You can read all about his exploits of hippydom and beekeeping this summer. And I think I've already mentioned The Corky and Peaeye. And I sort of assumed that they'd like being next to each other on the list... what with all the togetherness this past weekend...

Ok... so I watch Queer as Folk still... And in some ways, I actually think it's gotten to be a better show.

But, I was really annoyed with the plotline early in this season in which Justin was dealing with his unresolved anger from being gay-bashed at the end of the first season. I thought it was just a bit over the top.

And then I got an email yesterday from Poppy telling me that a mutual friend of ours had been bashed this weekend.

I was in the Quarter Saturday nite and I briefly hung out with one of my friends, who told me about a party he had attended earlier in the night with his boyfriend. But they decided to go their separate ways after the party.

Around 4 in the morning, his boyfriend was walking in the Quarter when a van pulled up along side of him and five guys got out of it and started beating him for no good reason. Some teenage girls came running to help and the big bad men ran away from them. But, the damage was done. He needed nine hours of surgery and will probably never regain more than 20% of the vision in one his eyes.

I'm unbelievably angry and sad. There's nothing I can do right now besides to let them know that they're in my thoughts and to offer to be there when and if they need help.

But, I don't think that storyline was so over the top right now. Given the chance, I could easily do violence to these guys and I wasn't even the victim...

My Memorial Day weekend was overall a bit unremarkable, but I did meet Corin and Billy and their respective boyfriends this weekend out in the bars, thanks to an initial intro from Jonno. Although.. Jonno... i overheard that snarky "he's got a blogSPOT" remark... Still love ya though...

It was oh so cute watching two couples flirt... although about an hour before they actually left the bar Monday nite, I wanted to scream out... "jesus christ... would you just go fuck already!"

Oh... and Corin... when do I get access to those pics??? :)

Argh. I've waited far too long to effectively write about my trip to Manhattan. It was fabulous, natch.

I stayed at The Chelsea Pines Inn, which wasn't luxurious but it was certainly in my price range and it was pretty perfectly located for my the purposes of my trip. I'd stay there again, the rooms are funky in a good way and the staff was sweet as hell.

Mark came straight over from his office to meet me Friday night and we spent a really pleasant evening just strolling around the Meat Packing District, the West Village and Greenwich Village. We were supposed to meet Charley in the East Village a bit later at the end of some big New York Blogger Drunkfest. But... we fell asleep in my room...

See... here's Mark sleeping...



We woke up the next morning and Mark spent most of the day with me, showing from Chelsea up through Midtown. It involved more than bit of shopping, I will admit. But... clothes be cheap in the city that supposedly doesn't sleep...

Mark eventually left me, cuz he had a party to attend that nite and a business trip the next day. I was terribly sad to see him go, cuz I do love me some Mark. He's one of the most adorable guys, looks and personality, that I've ever met. I've had a HUGE crush on him since we met last summer in San Francisco. Mark has since added a boyfriend to his life since last summer however, so I exercised a massive amount of willpower and our activities on this trip weren't quite so extracurricular... He's still a great kisser tho...

Saturday nite, Charley was too hungover to hang out with me, so I compiled a list of recommended bars from Charley and Mark and hit the East Village by myself. Staying in Chelsea, I had been a bit put out by what I'd seen of New York gay boys thus far. But the moment I walked into the first East Village bar, I felt like I was HOME. Tattoos, haircuts, fashion, etc... much more to my taste. The night is a bit of blur, but I managed to visit seven different bars over the course of the night. The highlights, IMO, being The Slide, The Phoenix and The Cock. Oh... and I wound up at some place called The West Side Club late in the evening...

Sunday, I was gonna check the Biennial at The Whitney, but when I got there there was an unmoving line to the street to get in. I guess all the natives waited until the last minute to check out the show. So, after a slight detour through some parade about Israel which the entire Jewish community of New York seemed to be attending, I hoofed my way back through the city to do some more sightseeing and shopping. I saw a good bit of the city this way, walking about 70 blocks. I briefly toyed with the idea of doing a show, but thought better of it. Even at TKTS prices, I just don't like theater that much...

Sunday nite was a highlight. After I caught the season finale of ALIAS in my room, Charley came over and met me and we went to The Rambles at The Park, which is a party that Jonny McGovern throws on Sunday nites. It was a really fun space and scene. And it got points for the fact that I heard a Moloko song... Charley's friends were all swell guys. And it's always so cute how no matter where you travel, people always get an excited look on their face when you tell them that you're from New Orleans.

Anyways, Monday was another Walkfest. I walked from my place on 14th Street to Ground Zero. I managed to take a zig-zaggy route that led me through Greenwich Village, Nolita, Little Italy, Chinatown and Soho. Ground Zero itself was weird. Not so much seeing the site, but standing in the middle of the people standing there staring into the abyss with such odd looks on their faces. It was just a bit too much for me to process, so I vacated my mind by shopping some more. Century 21 is right across the street after all.... Monday nite I was too pooped to do anything too strenuous, so I went to Hell. The bar in the Meat Packing District, that is. I sat there in the mostly empty bar for a couple of hours and chatted with Joel, the utterly adorable bartender who had an iPod full of music exactly to my taste.

And then Tuesday, bidding a fond farewell to H&M, I came home...