First “The Facts of Life” and now THIS?

Really, George, really? According to ShowBizSpy the handsome actor went out on a date with Madonna after her divorce from Guy Ritchie.  Fortunately, it didn’t take long before he came to his senses.

Read on…

On Sunday mornings, everyone on the Brevity staff gets two-hours off from reading submissions, so we brew coffee and rip into the New York Times.  It has become rather commonplace (but always pleasing) to find a past Brevity contributor featured in the Times‘ outstanding Modern Love column. In the past, Modern Love has featured valued Brevitians such as Ann Bauer, Lori Jakiela, Gary Presley, & Tim Elhajj, to name just a few.

Anyway, this past Sunday we open our Times and are halfway through the Modern Love column when it hits us — “She’s in the next issue!”

So while you are waiting for Jennifer Percy’s wonderful essay “Closing Time ” to arrive in the January 2010 issue of Brevity, check out her intriguing  essay in Modern Love:

“I was so in love with you there,” he said one evening when I mentioned the place in the Midwest where we had met. He said that phrase often, and it always vaguely distressed me, as if he was suggesting that love was a label he could pass along freely from day to day, attaching it here and there in his memory.

I asked a friend about this and the friend said he thought it was better that way, about love, and how my boyfriend moved it around like an object. He told me he thought my boyfriend was honest, and that no one can ever love someone constantly, equally, at all times. It has to rise and fall and wax and wane to maintain its permanence. That is its permanence.

The full Modern Love essay is here.

The Modern Love column runs every week in the Sunday Styles section of the New York Times.  Anyone can submit a column, and whomever chooses among the submissions does an incredible job, because it is always worth reading.

My writing group companion and friend Gary Presley has a Modern Love essay appearing in the New York Times this week. Congratulations Gary!

It’s a real winner. Here’s a little taste:

And so it was that the man in a wheelchair, sardonic and standoffish, and the vibrant young woman who loved science and worried over how she would support her sons, developed an odd connection, a link to a place where hands might touch, but thoughts and feelings and emotions began to flicker like lightning beyond the horizon.

More…

Do you have your own Modern Love story you want to submit to the New York Times? Here’s how you might go about it.

The ecstasy, passion and turmoil of love- love in all its consuming forms- have been parsed and dissected over the millennia, but the essence continues to elude. Philosophers and poets have struggled to understand this most primal of human emotions, only to come up short. Plato compared love to the appreciation of beauty, but what is beauty? Descartes saw an emotion so dee[ that a lover’s soul actually merged with the soul of the person loved. Freud suspected that love was a vestige of arrested development and confined it to the couch. And yet, Shakespeare might have said it best when he asked, famously, “What is Love” and left the question to answer itself.

The failure to understand love has obviously not prevented us from falling in love. Everyday, someone is struck by Cupid’s arrow and learns, first hand, what love really means. Ask that person to explain it, however, and you will get a hundred different answers- all inadequate. She might argue that love is simply a feeling, like being happy or sad. But that would not explain how love can sometimes contradict itself, our emotions, or why we can be angry and in love with the same person at the same time. Many couples, however, are sexually passionate and may like each other without truly being in love. And then there is the argument that love is a mutual affection based on admiration, attachment and common interests. But love is much more than just a partnership. To paraphrase a familiar catch phrase, sometimes being in love means letting go.

Symbols allow us to express love in a way that words often cannot. The ineffable qualities attributed to love are eloquently captures in a visual language that has evolved for as long as man has sought to explain it. In fact, the earliest love symbols predate civilization and language itself. One of the very first examples of prehistoric art, a limestone sculpture of a pregnant woman, is thought to have been carried by male hunters as a reminder of their mates back home – a precursor perhaps of the modern-day locket. Some even argue that warmth was not the only service fire provided cavemen; it also awakened their desire for knowledge, primarily because it accompanies the desire for love. By the time man began developing a crude written language, love was one of the first symbols coined. In Egyptian hieroglyphics, for instance, the ankh represented a love shared between two people, among other things.

In the millennia since then, the vocabulary of love symbols has flourished and grown more nuanced, offering tongue-tied lovers a token for every occasion. There are gifts of courtship and signs for commitment, even gestures to express mourning over a lover’s death. Each new symbol fills a void in language created by the rising complexity of romantic relationships. Moreover, new symbols are a response to changing social mores. While love may be universal, transcending both time and place, how love is expressed symbolically is a reflection of each culture’s relation to love and sexual relationships. A culture that extolls love will glorify its virtues through rich imagery, while a repressive society will discourage and sublimate them. Seen the other way, whether it finds pleasure in romance, the way young lovers do, or responsibility and consequences, like a schoolmarm.

Some of the most magnificent symbols date back to Ancient Greece and Rome, where love and sex were treated as just another of life’s ongoing bacchanals. Pagan love was guilt-free, hedonistic and unrestrained. Bisexuality was encouraged, as were homosexual relations between men and boys. Paramours and courtesans were considered superior to wives and virtuous women, and men who managed to fall in love were considered victims of illness. In keeping with this “liberated” climate where sex was worshiped, love symbols were elevated from static tokens to the echelons of the Gods. And each God was as fickle and promiscuous as Greco-Roman relationships themselves. Cupid, the mischievous matchmaker, embodies the pleasure-seeking values of this period: a God that symbolizes the uninhibited nature  of romance, where few rules dictate where love can strike. Likewise, Venus, the impetuous love Goddess, exemplifies what was considered the enviable qualities of women: uncontrolled passion, insatiable lust and unrivaled beauty.

By the Middle ages, as Christianity swept across Europe, sex was turned into a guilty and sinful activity, more a civic duty than a biological gift. Premarital sex was forbidden and married couples could only have sex in one position and never on Sundays, and then only to conceive children. If women were sometimes relegated to sex objects in Greco-Roman culture, medieval women were second-class citizens, property given away at marriage and valued for being nurturing mothers. Romance as we know it today did not exist; love was merely a pretext for keeping families together. Pagan rituals that celebrated love were suppressed by the Catholic Church across the continent. The festival of St. Valentine’s Day, which originated in Rome to honor the God of fertility, was converted into a commemoration of a martyred saint. And the heart, the symbol of primal love between two people, was recast into a religious icon representing God’s transcendent love for man.

The start of courtly love and the creation of the romantic ideal emerged in the 11th century. Courtly love, which was based on a highly ritualized code that prescribed the behavior of ladies and their suitors, existed to serve the lady. A nobleman in love with a married woman of equally high -or higher- stature had to prove his devotion by heroic deeds and amorous writings. Once the lovers had exchanged pledges and consummated their passion, complete secrecy had to be maintained. Although the pleasures of lovemaking returned, the act itself was regarded as baser than “true love”, expressed mostly through kissing, touching and fondling. As the Protestant Reformation movement gained ground, courtly love introduced the element of romance between men and women for the first time. This revolutionary concept, in which love was based on mutual respect and admiration, elevated women from a servant to an equal, at least in matters of the heart.

This seismic shift in the regard of love- divine sacrament to emotional happiness- was attended by a largesse of love symbols. Courtiers relied on any advantage, including extravagant gifts, to win a woman’s heart. Though little jewelry was made during the Middle Ages, by the 12th century, jewelry making reached the status of a fine art. Diamonds, once reserved for monarchs as a sign of their crushing wealth, became a gift offered in marriage, while gold and other precious metals were removed from the vaults, spun into decorative forms and worn by women to show off their statute and charm. The end of this period also gave us some of the history’s greatest lovers: Romeo and Juliet, the 16th century classic story of star-crossed lovers, and Casanova, the Italian romantic born in 1725 who remains the archetypal seducer of women.

As the Victorian age arrived in the 19th century, love symbols became more baroque and laden. Outright displays of affection were discouraged, and Victorian symbols allowed lovers to express that which could not be uttered in polite company. The rise of capitalism meant the decline of nobility and the ascension of a new class of rich entrepreneurs who rejected the courtly customs in favor of a maudlin sensibility. Women, once appreciated for being dazzling and flirtatious, were now held up to prudish notions about virginity, virtue and modesty. Wedding dresses, for instance, became layered and restrictive, burying the flesh under yards of textiles. This new sensibility is perhaps best exemplified in the subtle language of flowers that allowed lovers to communicate without the knowledge of chaperones. The type of flower presented, its color, even how it was worn conveyed a particular message. And the messages themselves were decidedly Victorian: wallflowers, ivy and myrtle all represented fidelity, while lavender and foxglove were, respectively, devotion and insincerity. If a boy presented a  girl with a red rose with leaves and thorns, it meant she was feared, but he was hopeful. If the girl returned it with the leaves removed, but the thorns intact, it was a signal for him to move on.

In the 20th century, Victorian restraints gave way to a new age of romantic love that united sexual outlet, affectionate friendship and family functions in a single relationship. Spurred by a capitalist boom and the burgeoning feminist movement, relations between the sexes became more egalitarian. Marriage was based on love and happiness, rather than on economics or prescribed rituals. Dating as we know it today came into existence and young lovers were given license to experiment before taking the plunge. New love symbols emerged to express this brave new world. Anniversary gifts afforded an opportunity for spouses to celebrate their continuing love. Valentine’s Day became a secular holiday celebrated by school children and grandparents alike; everything from chocolate hearts to greeting cards flooded the marketplace. Young lovers, meanwhile, developed their own special symbols like identification bracelets, tree inscriptions and varsity jackets.

New symbols have also been coined in response to major social, political and medical events in the latter part of the 20th century. The worldwide scourge of HIV and the failure to find a cure has transformed the condom, once considered vulgar, into a  life-saving symbol of respect between lovers. The feminist revolution further realigned the boundaries between the sexes, and questioned whether certain love symbols were not themselves sexist in nature. Technology has also given us new avenues of communication through which to express and find love. As any American teenager knows, typing ‘143′ into a person’s pager translates into ‘I love you’. Emails and instant messages have revolutionized the courtship process – think of them as the 21st century’s equivalent to the handwritten love letters from the previous millennium.

It would be obvious to state that new love symbols will continue to arise as love takes on new forms. Yet, the sentiments they express will be surprisingly similar. The Gods of the Greco-Roman era may share little on the outside with the streaming 1s and 0s that make up modern-day love missives. But as their core, both hope to express that which cannot be put into words- the ineffable qualities of love that have stumped man since the beginning of history. Empires might rise and fall, wars might sever relationships, plagues might ravish generations, but love will always -always- conquer time and symbols will be its witness.

What is your symbol of love?

(Source: Assouline)

After a year of an online *romance*, with a couple of short face to face rendevous that were more awkward than riveting, we finally fucked.  I need to back up a bit, as all I really want to do is rush immediately to the sex.

When I met David, I was not at my best.  Due to medical issues, I had easily gained 25 lbs. beyond my usual 125 weight.  Not only that, when we first met, I was distracted, a little spacey, and just wanted to get our transaction over with (I was buying something from him through craigslist).  He was soft spoken, though solid, muscular, attractive and easy-going.  His girlfriend was with him that day, and I introduced myself to both of them.  She didn’t look terribly different from me.  The main differences were that she was a bit taller, spoke with an accent, and had dyed hair.   I talked with David alone while I was puling out cash, and within 5 minutes, I had made a few observations about his body, the way he carried himself, and I found out that he was a professor, and the fact that he didn’t look like one.  There was a lot beneath the surface.  I wanted to fuck him immediately.  

I didn’t trust myself with this feeling.  I was going through some very tough issues at home.  I began an email correspondence with him that was refreshing and completely unexpected.  His style of writing, and thought process is not only incredibly intelligent, but also straight forward and full of humor and humility.   After our first real-time chat, my head was swimming.  I think it was the first time anyone had thrown in the word “pussy” so many times where I didn’t want to gag and throw up. 

We don’t live close to eachother, so with demanding schedules, this email relationship developed.  We saw eachother a couple of times, and though he hugged me tight after our lunches, there wasn’t really that physical connection I’d hoped for.  Things became quiet.  And then, within the last couple of months, something changed.  I started to feel like me again.  My pussy felt like it was in a dry spell for a year and without reason, without logic, it came gushing back.  I promptly started to open up during our conversations.  I’d stopped trying to be so proper.  He was surprised at my lack of filter and candor, which he called “aggressively confessional”.  We met, we made out, it felt incredible.  When he kissed me, my heartbeat sank into my pussy, and when he moved his hand to softly carress, I regretted that I wore panties.  And then, on a sunny afternoon last week, we fucked.

It was our first time, and I did not expect such … depth, brightness.  But that changed after the first 5 minutes of being in the same room together.  Finally.  Privacy, closed doors, quiet, uninterrupted solid block of time and space.  Space for his mouth to roam.   Time to linger.  Space to spread out.  Time to rush.  Rush through taking off clothes, and not bother to unclasp my bra.  His tongue was soft.  He hungrily ate my pussy, and fucked me with his fingers.  His cock was delicious.

Genere: Techno/Dub

Andy Stott è uno di quei produttori che mi ha sempre attirato. La sua musica è totalmente diversa da quella che solitamente ascolto, Stott è in grado di trasmettere una vibra a dir poco ipnotica, ti porta a surfare in mezzo alle onde, tra techno, house, dub, electro e IDM.

Che dire un pezzo di Stott si può quasi comprare a scatola chiusa,

Le sue performance dal vivo sono sempre stupefacenti, insieme a Claro Intelecto (amico di vecchia data, mentore e collaboratore), hanno creato una nuova generazione su Modern Love con releases come “Warehouse sessions” o “Unknown Exceptions”.

Questa release è in edizione limitata su singolo lato, vynil 12″  con solamente 500 copie per tutto il mondo.

“Night Jewel” è il classico pezzo per preparare la pista, basslines quadrate e progressive, chords con riverbero continuo. E’ sicuramente una delle migliori incisioni di Stott fino ad oggi, intuitiva, imaginativa, calda ed ipnotica! “Night Jewel” è un ascolto obbligato per chiunque sia interessato nella progressività dei bassi e nelle digressioni su più generi, dove techno house, dub, vanno in collisione creando qualcsa di nuovo.

Preascolto:

Side A. Night Jewel

5th November 2009

Tracklisting:

Steve Mason – ‘All Come Down’ (White Label)
Peverelist – ‘Esperanto’ from the LP ‘Jarvik Mindstate’ (Punch Drunk)
Paul White – ‘Dream State (Dam Tales)’ Extended Version from the LP ‘Sounds From The Skylight’ (One Handed Music)
Mike Slott – ‘40 Winx’ from the LP ‘Lucky19′ (LuckyMe)
Pinch feat Yolanda – ‘Get Up’ Jack Sparrow remix (Tectonic)
Rudi Zygaldo – ‘Missa Per Brevis’ from the LP ‘Great Western Laymen’ (Planet Mu Dubplate)
Gatekeeper – ‘Blip’ (If Symptoms Persist)
Soul Motive Mix:
Eleven Tigers – ‘Stableface’ (Peverelist rmx)
Eleven Tigers – ‘Flux’
Rossi B & Luca – ‘Jah No Dead’
Eleven Tigers – ‘Thesis’
Eleven Tigers – ‘Frozen Wheel’
Hyetal – ‘Neon Speech’
Eleven Tigers – ‘Stableface’
Eleven Tigers – ‘With a Little Patience’
Unknown – ‘Secrets’
Modern Love Mix:
Demdike Stare – Untitled Intro (Unreleased)
Claro Intelecto – Untitled (Unreleased)
Andy Stott – Untitled (Unreleased)
MLZ – Deephard (Unreleased)
Pendle Coven – ‘MillPhreak’ (Unreleased)
Andrea – Untitled 1 Daphne (Unreleased)
Andrea – Untitled 2 Daphne (Unreleased)
Millie – Untitled 1 Daphne (Unreleased)
Millie & Andrea – Untitled 1 Daphne (Unreleased)
Hate – Untitled 1(Unreleased)
Hate – Untitled 2 (Unreleased)
Andrea – Untitled 3 (Unreleased)
DJ Dman – Unknown Juke track
Numbers Mix (Mixed by Spencer):
Hudson Mohawke – ‘Still On It instrumental’ (Wireblock x LuckyMe)
Lando Kal – ‘Fuzzy Ankles’ (forthcoming Numbers)
Slugabed – ‘The System’ (forthcoming Numbers)
Redinho – ‘Mo Brap’ (forthcoming Numbers)
Ghosts On Tape – ‘Mogadishu Night Life’ (Wireblock)
Rustie – ‘Clipper’ (Stuff Records)
Low Limit – ‘Where U Been 7.0′ – drops (forthcoming Numbers)
Redinho – ‘Lightning Strikes’ (forthcoming Numbers)
L-vis 1990 – ‘Run’ (Dress 2 Sweat)
Ghosts On Tape – ‘Predator Mode’ – Roska Remix (Wireblock)
Mr Majika – ‘Different Lekstrix’ (forthcoming Numbers)
Deadboy – ‘IfUWantMe’ (forthcoming Numbers)
Rustie – ‘Throw Some D’s / Click Clack’ (Dress 2 Sweat)
Emvee – ‘Glitch Dub’ (Wireblock)
Touchy Subject – ‘Wicked Act’ (forthcoming Numbers)
SRC – ‘Gold Coinz’ (forthcoming Numbers)
Kavsrave – ‘MD’ (forthcoming Numbers)
Rustie – ‘Bad Science’ (Wireblock)
Taz Buckfaster – ‘Gold Tooth Grin’ (forthcoming Numbers)
Maxximus – ‘Neo’ Shackleton remix (MG77)

Image via Air America via degreedate.com.

David Brooks is sort of the Andy Rooney of the New York Times, always baffled by modern ways of life and love, and wishing we could return to the good old days, maybe even in Lake Woebegone, where the men don’t have iPhones, the women don’t have Facebook, and all of the relationships are hookup-free until marriage.  Brooks’ latest column is about how cell phones and texting have killed romance.

Brooks’ column is littered with proof of how he just. doesn’t. get. it. (He notes that the daters he quotes make up nicknames for their partners, not catching that “Stage Five Clinger” is a “Wedding Crashers” reference.  He also seems to think Bruce Springsteen is an appropriate cultural reference.) I sort of imagine that Brooks does his phoning on a Jitterbug.  He seems to almost want to return to the days of arranged marriages:

Once upon a time — in what we might think of as the “Happy Days” era — courtship was governed by a set of guardrails. Potential partners generally met within the context of larger social institutions: neighborhoods, schools, workplaces and families. There were certain accepted social scripts. The purpose of these scripts — dating, going steady, delaying sex — was to guide young people on the path from short-term desire to long-term commitment.

Now we have a dating free market, and free market conservative though he is, Brooks DOES NOT WANT!!!  Why? Because “texting and the utilitarian mind-set are naturally corrosive toward poetry and imagination.”

Ezra Klein rebutted that point pretty handily:

Columns like Brooks’s irk me because they demean not only my lived experiences, but those of everyone I know. To offer a slightly more modern rebuttal, Sunday was my one-year anniversary with my girlfriend. A bit more than a year ago, we first met, the sort of short encounter that could easily have slipped by without follow-up. A year and a week ago, she sent me a friend request on Facebook, which makes it easy to reach out after chance meetings. A year and five days ago, we were sending tentative jokes back-and-forth. A year and four days ago, I was steeling myself to step things up to instant messages. A year and three days ago, we were both watching the “Iron Chef” offal episode, and IMing offal puns back-and-forth, which led to our first date. A year ago today, I was anxiously waiting to leave the office for our second date.

It is not for David Brooks to tell me those IMs lack poetry, or romance. I treasure them. Electronic mediums may look limited to him, but that is only because he has never seen his life change within them. Texting, he says, is naturally corrosive to imagination. But the failure of imagination here is on Brooks’s part.

I have to say I’m with Ezra. Jon and I may not have met online, but after our short summer together, we started at separate schools, and dated long distance for three years. Email and IM were some of our main modes of conversation. And how I wish I had thought to save those emails and IMs, precisely because they were full of poetry and passion.  The medium itself doesn’t stifle imagination and romance, only the way a user chooses to use it.

So, technology enhanced, rather than killed, our budding love. But what about now that we’re married? Is technology killing the love and trust built in those years of IMs and emails and weekend 100 mile drives for dates?

Apparently, according to a piece I read at Air America, it’s a growing trend for Christian couples in particular to share one online account (be it email, Facebook, Twitter…) “as a safeguard against the ever-expanding temptations of the Internet.”  The couples quoted in the piece who share accounts seem to think this is a great display of openness and trust. I guess I see that argument, but it seems to me that finding it necessary to do this, especially if neither partner has a history of infidelity, is in and of itself a display of distrust.  Not to mention, potentially a violation of the privacy of those trying to contact you.  If I were to email a girlfriend about a personal issue I needed to pour my heart out over, and her husband read that email, I would be hurt and betrayed. Some things, though they are not salacious, are intended for the seer’s eyes only, not for the eyes of his or her spouse.

This idea also troubles me because so many people seem to completely lose their individual identity upon marriage. Just browse some STFUMarrieds if you don’t believe me.  Sharing one email, Facebook, or Twitter only makes that problem worse.

The way it works in my house is this: we each have our own Gmail. Sometimes, yes, we see each other’s inboxes (and Facebooks), because we both tend not to sign out on our shared laptop, and because both of our Gmail accounts feed into the Mail App (which we pretty much only use for ease of emailing photos from iPhoto, for quick emails with mailto links, and for notification of new emails without having to use a separate Gmail notifier).  I’m pretty sure we both know each others’ passwords to things, because we each have one word we tend to use as a password, and because we do share some online accounts, at Amazon and Mint, for example.  The thing is, we don’t regularly read each others’ email. There is absolutely no need. We can actually trust each other *not to* read each others’ email, even though it would be very easy to do so.

Sure, sometimes issues arise due to our online presences. Jon, for one, doesn’t like to have to read about my life in my blog– he’d rather hear things from me first and not be surprised to read them online later. I try to be sensitive about that and not break relationship news online before I’ve broken it in person.  I, on the other hand, have been a little cautious about him friending ex-girlfriends on Facebook, and we eventually settled on some boundaries that work for us: he can friend them, I’m just not comfortable with any of their contact being private, in the form of “messages,” and prefer for it to take place in the openness of wall posts and comments.  The way I see it, it’s sort of like not meeting privately with an ex.

To me, handling issues that may arise as they come, rather than heading them off wholesale by giving up any concept of online privacy, shows that we trust each other enough to negotiate our boundaries and to communicate whenever we feel uncomfortable with the other’s behavior.  Just the exact way we handle everything else in our shared and individual lives.

This, folks, is an example of why David Brooks is one of the best and most insightful writers out there today.

Once upon a time — in what we might think of as the “Happy Days” era — courtship was governed by a set of guardrails. Potential partners generally met within the context of larger social institutions: neighborhoods, schools, workplaces and families. There were certain accepted social scripts. The purpose of these scripts — dating, going steady, delaying sex — was to guide young people on the path from short-term desire to long-term commitment.

David Brooks

Over the past few decades, these social scripts became obsolete. They didn’t fit the post-feminist era. So the search was on for more enlightened courtship rules. You would expect a dynamic society to come up with appropriate scripts. But technology has made this extremely difficult. Etiquette is all about obstacles and restraint. But technology, especially cellphone and texting technology, dissolves obstacles. Suitors now contact each other in an instantaneous, frictionless sphere separated from larger social institutions and commitments…

This does not mean that young people today are worse or shallower than young people in the past. It does mean they get less help. People once lived within a pattern of being, which educated the emotions, guided the temporary toward the permanent and linked everyday urges to higher things. The accumulated wisdom of the community steered couples as they tried to earn each other’s commitment.

Today there are fewer norms that guide in that way. Today’s technology seems to threaten the sort of recurring and stable reciprocity that is the building block of trust.

Take my advice and read the full article. It is well worth your time. Get it here.

This Friday I point you to some recommended reading around the blogosphere:

1. I love the concept (and stamina!) behind the Read All Day blog, where one woman reads a book a day for an entire year and writes about it. Wow! (Hat Tip: Lisa Romeo Writes.)

2. My cousin sent me this link to Will Pearson’s stunning photographs of London. While you’re there, have a look at this piece in The Guardian by Will Self on why British children’s author Roald Dahl – of Fantastic Mr. Fox fame -  is so very, very good.

3. If you’ve ever lost a child, or know someone who has, this Modern Love essay from the New York Times is terrifically hopeful and sad.

4. I’m a huge Lionel Shriver fan (If you haven’t read We Need To Talk About Kevin, we need to talk…) Here are her thoughts on why it can be so tricky to write about your family…even in fiction.

5. I have nothing more to say about the following clip on You Tube other than if you can still remember back when we all used rotary phones, you need to see this. (Hat tip: Formerly Hot.)

6. Finally, my thoughts in PoliticsDaily.com on why the EU may be falling apart…and whether America cares.

Enjoy your weekend!

Oh yes, and please do follow me on Twitter.

Ahead of the Mortified two-year Anniversary show in DC tonight, I thought I’d bust out some dating haikus a girl-friend has been steadily texting me over the past few days.

Local Bar Manager

Stick thin legs, tube sox
You spent ten months in the clink
Leave me for cobwebs

FedEx Field

Fancy arm duck tattoo
I pay for all drinks and food
When game tix were free

Why?

36 years old
You still call yourself Spanky
Impotent herp dick

Books

The Chart

HARDCOVER BEST-SELLERS

MEMOIR

.:m~gmml  Downloads Writing your way through a midlife crisis means navigating one of , u the classic memoir pitfalls: x^faj how to make your woes * as moving to readers as they seem to you. Unfortunately, this collection of musings from a new-to-California soccer mom comes off as more moody than moving.  Gideon, a contributor to The New York Times’ “Modern Love” column, seems to wallow in discontent while pondering her worthiness as a wife and parent, always struggling to identify the source of her ennui. Not a Styron-like portrait of depression by any means, Year has some self-deprecating charm, but overreaches in its depiction of everyday angst. C+ -Christine Fenno I’m So Happy for You

Lucinda Rosenfeld

NOVEL

As romantic fantasies go, the premise of Maynard’s f | new novel is a doozy: UHH i Server Status It’s the Thursday before ‘ Labor Day in 1987, and 13-year-old Henry has lured his reclusive single mom out of the house for a trip to Pricemart. There they meet a guy named Frank who cajoles them into giving him a ride.  He turns out to be an all-around fix-it guy, adept at baking pies and teaching base¬ball. He’s also an escapee from a nearby prison, the subject of a big manhunt, and just what Henry’s mom needs after years of postdivorce isolation. Client Area Labor Day works-despite its implausible Lifetime plot-by smartly focusing on the blinkered and somewhat naive perspective of Henry. B -Thorn Geier

New York Times “Modern Love”
13 October 2009

Modern Love

Wish you could fast forward to the interesting parts of your friends’ dating stories?  Modern Love is here.  Help The New York Times get their balance sheets out of the red and get their pages read. It’s actually a rather entertaining collection of well-written, human-interest columns divulging intimidate details of personal relationships.  Screw Chicken Soup, it’s all about Modern Love.

Demdike Stare – Symbiosis (Modern Love, 12 października 2009)

Damdike Stare kryje dwie artystyczne osobowości, działające na scenie muzycznej Manchasteru. Pierwszą z nich jest Miles Whittaker, dosyć dobrze znany jako MLZ, pod którym to pseudonimem wydaje dwunastki głównie przez label Modern Love, ale jest też połową duetu Pendle Coven, który wiosną tego roku zaskoczył świetną płytą dla tej samej wytwórni. Wspiera go Sean Canty a.k.a. Sean Vinylment, który jest jednym z najbardziej rozpoznawalnych w mieście kolekcjonerów winyli. Ich projekt wziął nazwę od najsłynniejszej wiedźmy Wzgórza Pendle, Elizabeth Southerns, znanej jako wiedźma Demdike.

Z notatki prasowej wynika, że album „Symbiosis” powstał z sampli wyciętych z indyjskiej, irańskiej i tureckiej, afrykańskiej, a także karaibskiej muzyki filmowej, ale muzycy zbudowali swoje utwory również z typowych house’owych struktur, wbijają się w ucho ciężkim dubem czy też modyfikowanym według potrzeb techno na równi z industrialem, norweskimi dronowcami, a nawet arktycznym noisem Miki Vainio.

Zatem muzyka duetu oscyluje wokół takich stylistyk, jak dub, downtempo, zachacza o wonky, lecz jednocześnie czerpie garściami z ambientu i dark techno, zaś Whittaker z Cantym luźno traktują konwencję, starając się niczym nie ograniczać i pozostawiając sobie duże pole do popisu. Ich muzyka, swobodnie nawiązująca do wymienionych gatunków, przede wszystkim straszy i jest na wszelkie sposoby udziwniana, a to za pomocą wspomnianych filmowych elementów, a to za pośrednictwem blaszanych brzdęków, gwizdów i świstów albo analogowej gęstwiny.

Otwierający album „Suspicious Drone” rzuca nas na głęboką wodę, która skrywa jakąś nieprzyjemną tajemnicę. Na pulsujący dron zostały nałożone metaliczne smagnięcia hatów, straszliwe smyki i inne mroczne dźwięki. „Haxan Dub” (tytuł wziął się z filmu o czarach, w którym William S. Burroughs był narratorem) powolnie płynie w kisielu niskiego basu i pobrzmiewa niczym reggae’owy kawałek z maszerującą perkusją jamajskiego szamana. Utrzymany w bardziej minimalnym tonie „Regressor” będzie drążył dziurę świdrującym basem i stukał oddalonymi kilofami, a następujący po nim utwór „All Hallows” idealnie odnalazłby się na ścieżce dźwiękowej do horroru.

Poprzez „Jannisary” wkraczamy w rozbujaną część płyty. Odnajdziemy tu echa nowojorskiego house’u poprzetykane irańskim hookiem, co, przy akompaniamencie siatki pogłosów, tworzy hipnotyzujący kawałek. Po nim pojawi się „Haxan”, chyba najbardziej ze wszystkich inspirowany berlińskim brzmieniem – pospieszna stopa przeszyta linią basową i charakterystyczne dla Basic Channel akordy mówią same za siebie.

Po zaczerpnięciu oddechu znowu wtrąceni zostajemy do krainy dreszczowców. „Extwistle Hall” funduje nam „medytacyjny” nastrój oczekiwania na najgorsze, gdzie czas odmierzają cymbałki rodem z  „Egzorcysty”, a kobiece majaki doprawiają cmentarny przekaz. Na tym tle „Trapped Dervish” brzmi prawie wesoło, zaś „Conjoined” ze swoimi afrykańskimi bębnami i elektronicznymi plumknięciami z drugiej strony pozwala poczuć się jak w domu. Płytę kończy „Ghostly Hardware”, który z sadystyczną powolnością wybrzmiewa zimnym, tępym dronem, tworząc co nieco chory ambient.

Nie wolno zapomnieć, że Demdike Stare tworzą dwie osoby. Pierwsza w postaci Whittakera wnosi muzyczną tradycję, do jakiej przyzwyczaiło nas Modern Love, druga, czyli Sean Canty, dodaje do „Symbiosis” egzotykę dźwięków zaczerpniętych z niecodziennych źródeł. Na bazie tego duet tworzy trochę przerażający klimat inspirowany okultyzmem i, rzecz jasna, wiedźmami z Pendle Hill. Obcowanie z ich muzyką może wywoływać różne uczucia, łącznie i przede wszystkim z tymi nieprzyjemnymi, ale zarazem wrażenia będą mocne i, jak na taki rodzaj artystycznej twórczości, nietypowe; dlatego warto sięgnąć po ten album.

Ocena: 3,5/5

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this is by far the most menacing and diabolically epic thing cursive has ever done. i have no clue what i just watched.

kasher also stopped by to do a daytrotter session, which is included after the jump. don’t pass on it. there’s a cover of bowie’s “modern love” and the cure’s “lovecats.” nuff said.

download:

cursive – let me up

-grizzly

daytrotter: