Stuff I Really Like

This is my favourite song right now. At this moment. Not that I've ever disliked it, but I dunno, right now it's doing something extra special for me. The frenetic but precise guitar work, the obtrusively melodic bass, and Robert Smith's delightful disgust as he spits his old-lady venom at some poor poseur or other, all building to that super-exciting train sound that may very well be the victim leaving town in a hurry, because the train and the song quickly fade out thereafter, realizing that they're not gonna top that: it all adds up to 2:57 of sonic perfection.

And these are some of my favourite cartoons right now. They're by the American cartoonist, B. Kliban.






I discovered Kliban in my early teens and immediately loved his expressive drawing style and absurdist sense of humour. It took me a long time to warm up to that ripoff artist Gary Larson, though I did eventually have to admit he was pretty funny too. Lately, Alison and I discovered and swiftly purchased a couple of Kliban books that we didn't already have. In one of those I read the sad piece of information that he died in 1990. It's a shame, because I'd just gotten all excited about his work again and was considering trying to contact him and express my admiration. I guess he was never exactly unknown, what with his cultily popular cat drawings and calendars, but he certainly never achieved the recognition of Gary Larson, who not only stole his fragment-of-a-third-person-narrative captioning style, but even published his single-panel cartoons in books the same size and shape. Anyway, it seems from my poking around on the internet that Kliban is weirdly floating around in the zeitgeist right now, and I'm happy to do whatever I can to keep him there.

Let's see... what else? This short book I recently bought and read was pretty fantastic: In the City: Random Acts of Awareness by Colette Brooks. I picked it up because it was on sale, sounded vaguely interesting, and had a Fassbender photo on the cover. It turned out to be a sort of memoir-like collection of ruminations on cities, mostly New York, and the people who live in them. Sounds kind of dull, I guess, but it's incredibly insightful and mysterious and thought-provoking and sad. Quick read, too, at a mere 108 pp. And it makes a great companion piece for Italo Calvino's not really similar but at the same time kind of similar Invisible Cities, which I'm still reading on and off, even though I think it's an even shorter work.

So that's my current opinions, but what have I actually been DOING? Oh, this and that; y'know. Did some yoga, got a haircut, experienced some Being, illustrated some lies. Softball's really the only interesting thing I can think of right now. We've played three evenings = six games so far this season, won only two of the games but I still say we're looking pretty damn good. Here are some photos Alison took on Sunday.





(Pre-haircut.)

Talk to you soon, I hope. Maybe next time I'll have done more stuff.

- Andrew