Christina Aguilera @ Staples Center; The Secret; NannyDuck; Lavender Diamond; New Young Pony Club; Cut Copy; Björk; Jarvis Cocker; The Apple, by Michel Faber; Un Lun Dun, by China Miéville; The Third One; etc.
Christina Aguilera @ Staples Center, 3/6
w/ Danity Kane, The Pussycat Dolls
Ain’t no other man! At this show! In a Joanna Newsom t-shirt!
Let me back up. Not much of a review going on here, since I can’t claim much of a familiarity with any of the work. We’ve had access to a corporate box at the Staples Center for some time, and while my family has made use of it many times, I’ve never felt a pressing desire to join them. (Hockey? Toby Keith?) But our access to the box may be going away soon, so I decided to take advantage while I still had the time.
Plus, I’d never been to an honest-to-goodness arena pop spectacle, and I didn’t want to let the opportunity pass me by.
Box food is a lot like the regular food you get at sports arenas: hot dogs, chips, popcorn, booze. The difference is that it’s all free. And you have to get it yourself, there’s no guy walking around who can just throw it to you. So that’s kind of a pain.
My sister had to tell me who Danity Kane were. I can’t say I was paying all that much attention to their set. The main impression I came away with was that Shannon Bex was in good shape.
At least Danity Kane had a DJ of sorts. The Pussycat Dolls have nothing on stage with them.
That one lead girl from the Pussycat Dolls should just ditch the rest of them. I’m not even sure what they’re there for. The last thing this group needs is more people.
Some of the stage banter is incredible: “Thank you for coming out tonight and making it possible for us to have the opportunity for this chance to perform for you.” (Not an exact quote, but it’s close.)
Hey, a live band. A big band with actual instruments. That’s more like it.
Christina Aguilera is a little slip of a thing, but she is all lung. Girlfriend can sing. That isn’t news to anyone, but it bears repeating. The songs on “Back To Basics” that got on my nerves all worked much better with a live band and backup dancers and skimpy costumes and flashing lights and big video screens and sparks and confetti. “Candyman” normally bugs the hell out of me, but on stage it was a ton of fun. There’s no telling how much of said fun was a result of the free beer I’d been drinking.
Overall, I had a pretty good time. Sure, there wasn’t the emotional imvolvement or degree of excitement that I would have gotten at a Kylie Minogue or Girls Aloud show — man, I want to go to a Kylie Minogue or Girls Aloud show — but I can’t complain about the seats or the price.
The Secret
If you’ve ever been made to sit through the 2004 space cult infomercial What The Bleep Do We Know, you probably remember an early scene where one of the film’s dubious “experts” attempts to explain how the way-back natives of the West Indies literally could not see Christoper Columbus’ approaching ships. They didn’t have a frame of reference for large, water-going vessels, therefore the ships were not part of the natives’ collective reality, and remained perfectly invisible until Columbus was strutting up and down the beach, getting his subjugate on. At that point, you probably also remember thinking something like, “Wait, go back a minute — that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. They can’t expect anyone to believe that, can they?”
Current publishing phenomenon The Secret is a lot like that. The collaborative effort of Australian talk show producer Rhonda Byrne and assorted “visionaries” (including a number of the talking heads who appeared in What The Bleep…), heartily endorsed by Oprah Winfrey, The Secret teaches a philosophy of universal entitlement, mixing in the “law of attraction,” the power of positive thinking, and now-typical distortions of quantum theory to support its New Age flummery. In short, if you want something bad enough, and believe super-hard enough that it can be yours, the universe will grant it to you. There you go. Now you know The Secret, so go to it. Not working for you? Maybe it would help if you bought this book. And this DVD. You spend a lot of time in the car and maybe aren’t much of a reader, so just get the book on tape. And if you’re willing to buy all that, you’re probably not going to say no to the soundtrack of the DVD. And in a few years, when sales of the current incarnation have slowed down, maybe Rhonda Byrne will release a whole new grip of books and DVDs all about her most recent findings on The Secret. You know, from all of that time she spends studying ancient manuscripts and hanging out in quantum theory think tanks. Blah. I’m all for positive thinking and determination when hard work is involved, but this is just embarrassing.
Anyone with five minutes and an internet connection should have no trouble turning up plenty of material that decries and debunks The Secret’s myriad absurdities much better than I can. Allow me to point you elsewhere. If you or someone you care about have been bamboozled, or even if you’re just curious, I strongly urge you to read Peter Birkenhead’s “Oprah’s Ugly Secret” at Salon, Ingrid Hansen Smythe’s “The Secret Behind The Secret” at eSkeptic (scroll down a bit), and Skepchick’s “An Open Letter to Oprah Winfrey.”
NannyDuck
I appreciate the thought, but you must understand that I can’t possibly eat this.
Lavender Diamond
Lavender Diamond doesn’t try to sugar coat things here; opening your heart is often synonymous with tearing it apart. It’s a bit of a scary thing, and some of us (ahem) would usually rather run away than run the risk. But if opening your heart makes the world feel the way that this song feels, the band has an airtight case on their hands. Whatever you’re going through right now, “Open Your Heart” will make you feel better.
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Imagine Our Love will be released on April 10th. It’s lovely, and could prove integral to our survival as a species. If enough people on the planet fall absolutely in love with Becky Stark, there may be some hope for us yet.
- Official site | MySpace
- Buy Imagine Our Love: Amazon UK
New Young Pony Club
New Young Pony Club has held kop’·ē·kăt’s Most Favored New Band status since I first heard their decade-highlight single, “The Get Go,” way back in the summer of 2005. You’ve most likely heard their song “Ice Cream” on those recent Intel ads. Last December, I was fortunate enough to catch their first ever U.S. appearance in Los Angeles. A froggy throat kept lead singer Tahita Bulmer at “110% nasty instead of [her] usual 200%” and limited the band’s set to a mere six songs, but they still devastated the room and made good on all the promises of their handful of releases. “The Bomb” continues their tradition of awesomeness. NYPC are working on an album, but they’ve been saying that for a while now.
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The Bomb single will be released on March 19th. If you’re stateside, and would like to buy something from NYPC that you can actually hold in your hands and feed to a CD player, you can order the New Young Pony Club EP.
- Official site | MySpace
- Buy The Bomb: Amazon UK
- Buy the New Young Pony Club EP: Amazon | Insound
Cut Copy
Cut Copy’s 2004 debut, Bright Like Neon Love, should have come with a pair of rollerskates. Seriously, put the album on and they’re the first thing you’ll think to reach for. You can’t just dance to this stuff. The band are currently hard at work on their follow-up. Based on this early single, they would be wise to take the rollerskates thing under consideration. Maybe throw in a free disco ball, too, to make up for their failure to wholly facilitate my our Xanadu fantasies on the first album. “Hearts On Fire” may not be their most impressive work, but it’s doubtless a sign of good things to come.
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The Hearts On Fire 12” should be out soon. Bright Like Neon Love is ready and waiting.
- Official site | MySpace
- Buy Bright Like Neon Love: Amazon | Insound
Björk
Pretty much just an excuse for me to post new material from Björk. This music box reworking of “The Boho Dance” is her contribution to A Tribute To Joni Mitchell, which also includes covers by Sufjan Stevens, Caetano Veloso, Brad Mehldau, Cassandra Wilson, Prince, Sarah McLachlan, Annie Lennox, Emmylou Harris, Elvis Costello, k.d. lang, and James Taylor.
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A Tribute To Joni Mitchell will be released on April 24th. Björk’s new album, Volta, is coming on May 8th.
- Official site | MySpace
- Buy A Tribute To Joni Mitchell: Amazon
Jarvis Cocker
Late last year, former Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker’s solo debut was released just around the time that I was finishing up Philip Pullman’s staggeringly ambitious, deeply flawed, and occasionally brilliant sci-fi/fantasy grab-bag, the “His Dark Materials” trilogy. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. “Quantum Theory,” the album’s most beautiful and heartfelt moment, touches on many of the trilogy’s themes and perfectly captures the mood of its bittersweet conclusion (coincidentally, the books’ most beautiful and heartfelt moment). So much so that I find it hard to believe that Cocker didn’t have that conclusion in mind when he was writing the song. So much so that I would even venture to say that the lyrics of “Quantum Theory,” to some extent, constitute spoilers. No, really. Cocker did write and perform the Wyrd Sisters songs in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, so there is a precedent here. Maybe he’s a big fan of young fantasy.
In any case, it’s now impossible for me to think about this song without thinking of the books, and vice versa. And yes, after going on about The Secret, I recognize the irony in endorsing a song called “Quantum Theory” that only deals with the stuff on a very superficial level. But this isn’t a philosophy or a lifestyle choice or a marketing scheme; just a great piece of music.
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mp3 | Jarvis – Quantum Theory
Jarvis will be released in the U.S. on April 3rd. The film adaptation of the first “Dark Materials” book, The Golden Compass (or The Northern Lights, in the U.K.) will be in theaters later this year.
The Apple, by Michel Faber
More sprees in London — Michel Faber returns to the world of his novel, The Crimson Petal and the White, with this slim volume of stories. I may have actually leapt into the air when I learned of The Apple’s existence, and the first thing I did when I reached my computer was pay a ridiculous rate to have a copy flown over from the UK. When the package arrived, I tore it open immediately and read the book in one sitting. There was a smile on my face the whole time.
I don’t know how to review this. In fact, let’s stop pretending and just do away with that word altogether. There are no reviews on this site. These are endorsements. I feel no responsibility to talk about the music and books I don’t like. If you see it here, I enjoyed it. So what I’m really asking myself here is, why did I enjoy this?
Let’s say you get together for lunch with a friend you haven’t seen for a while. Regardless of what you have for lunch, you’re going to take away the great feeling that comes with having reconnected with someone you care about. The food could have been awful and the service unfriendly, but you’ll probably still say you had a great time.
Faber claims that these stories are meant to stand apart from Crimson Petal, and can be just as easily enjoyed by someone who has never read the novel. I’m not sure I agree with him. Faber also knows exactly what his readers want to know, and as always, he enjoys playing with them. Many of your most pressing questions will never be answered.
There are people reading this who have read Crimson Petal and would perhaps like to read The Apple, and people who haven’t yet read Crimson Petal. I don’t want to spoil anything for anyone.
This wasn’t very helpful at all, was it?
I love these characters, and I’ll take them however I can. So are these stories good? Yes. It was good to reconnect with the old gang, even if only for a little while. I hope they never stay away for very long.
You hear that, Faber?
Un Lun Dun, by China Miéville
As a disclaimer, I should probably tell you where I stand regarding China Miéville: Everything he does is awesome. Even Iron Council. A lot of people, for whatever reason, really dislike Iron Council. Some will even say that it was a mistake for Miéville to write it in the first place. Those people are just plain wrong. Iron Council is not only a superb fantasy novel, but it stands alongside the best-written novels I’ve ever read, period. I reread the first few chapters of Iron Council last night, and I’m still astonished at Miéville’s abilities to make sentences do things I’ve never seen them do before, and say, beautifully, in a handful of words what would take many writers, lesser writers, paragraphs to get across. So I’m pretty biased.
Un Lun Dun, Miéville’s first novel for young readers, begins like any number of children’s fantasy novels: Two young girls are transported to a mysterious world (UnLondon, a warped mirror image of our London) which has lately been menaced by a great evil (in this case, a sentient, poisonous Smog), and it just so happens that one of these girls is the Chosen One, destined to arrive at the darkest hour and defeat the villain once and for all. Miéville throws a wrench in the works by quickly doing away with the Chosen One and leaving the fate of UnLondon in the hands of The Sidekick. It’s as if Harry got knocked off halfway through Sorcerer’s Stone, and it became Ron’s responsibility to stop Voldemort. There are other fantasy clichés in Miéville’s sights, and like a man with an agenda, he takes them down.
For obvious reasons, the language in Un Lun Dun isn’t as complex or compelling as it is in Miéville’s adult novels. And plot-wise, he draws heavily from Clive Barker’s The Thief of Always and Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. But the strange denizens of UnLondon are Miéville’s own: Carnivorous giraffes, broken umbrellas that jet squid-like through the air, rooftop pirates who vow never to walk among the “ground-lubbers,” words that take on a physical life of their own once spoken, men with pincushions or inkwells or birdcages for heads. My favorite monsters in the book are the “black windows,” portals to other places and times that walk around on wooden spider legs, gobbling up unlucky travelers.
The story drags a bit in the middle, as these things tend to do, but the last third of the book is exciting and relentlessly inventive. Un Lun Dun is a fun, atypical adventure that is sure to be rewarding for any young fantasy reader, but it mostly makes me impatient for another trip to Bas-Lag.
Watch a great interview with Miéville from last month’s New York Comic Con: Part 1, Part 2.
The Third One
I was planning to write about Tom McCarthy’s novel, Remainder, having finished it about a week ago, but I think I need to let it crawl around under my skin a little more before I put my thoughts down. In short, it may be the most disturbing book I’ve ever read. I’ll try to explain why later.
Etc.
- Ficlits. Collaborative flash fiction, all covered under Creative Commons.
- D-I-Y Dark Side Of The Moon. The classic album broken down into its base elements. Perfect for sampling.
- Gummy Bear chandelier. Probably the only chandelier that smells and tastes as good as it looks. (via)
- Ambigram door mat. “Come in/Go away.”
- Human Skateboard. Great stop-motion by PES.
- Plant Life on Mars. Beautiful and wildly imaginative animation from the 1957 Disneyland episode, “Mars and Beyond.” Features screeching organs and narration by Paul Frees, Disney’s slightly ominous science-guy voice.
- Echoes. The latest game from Binary Zoo perfects the “Geometry Wars” model.
- Thirteen! YES. Back to doing what he does best.
5 Comments
Here’s my tidbit on the DaM…
DaM = Deep and Meaningful
Amen on The Secret, brutha. My mom’s been telling me about PMA (Positive Mental Attitude) for about 20 years now. This not only isn’t any different, it’s not even such attractive re-packaging.
And if the
scam artists“creators” behind The Secret really cared about the world’s well being, they’d be giving that shit out instead of charging $30 a pop for the DVD. Ludicrous.Oh snap! I just figured out the rss feed thing!
I saw Lavender Diamond in LA about five or six months ago–they are really awesome. They put on a good show.
p.s. I can’t imagine you at a Christina Aguilera concert but glad to know you enjoyed yourself.
UPDATE.
So pleased to hear that The Apple was as good as all that! I’ll have to try to track down a copy. Any word on it coming out in the US anytime soon?