A regular pissing match

Here's one sight I definitely didn't see in Prague over the summer.

Kafka once wrote a short story about Kampa, the quiet little section of Prague where this artwork is installed, and while his story obviously couldn't have mentioned the installation, you have to think it wouldn't have fazed him. I also wonder if he is one of the notable Prague denizens "quoted."

(via Dave Barry)

Toothless

It would not be exaggeration to say I had been waiting five-plus years for last night. Ever since I saw Nine Inch Nails perform in Chicago way back in April 2000 on the Fragility v 2.0 tour, I knew that the next time they went on tour I would do whatever it took not only to get tickets but to get floor tickets, just to ensure that I had an optimal viewing experience.

Fragility was incredible. It pioneered the use of giant LCD screens for not only video clips, but also lighting and other stage effects. And, oh yeah, the music absolutely kicked ass. I had been to some good shows, and I've definitely seen acts that were worth catching live again, but never had a show before or since had such an transformative impact.

Granted, that wasn't entirely the doing of the concert. The timing was simply fortuitous in that I really began to discover NIN in a meaningful sense at a time when I was in the middle of a mentally torturous, emotionally abusive friendship. I could not (and still can't) help listening to The Fragile without getting this profound sensation that, lyrically, Trent Reznor had simply decided to describe my personal feelings with tremendous precision. If nothing else, since then I've felt a sort of kinship with Trent in that I can imagine what sorts of anguish and grief he's endured. And ever since, I've just had this transcendant relationship to the entire NIN catalog. Stated simply, if ever I were to try convey such emotions and experience musically, I think I'd just wind up copying Trent (assuming I ever had a millionth of his musical talent) because he's captured it so perfectly.

Last night's show was no different. Much like Fragility, the With Teeth tour has added a multimedial depth to NIN music that overwhelms my sensory perception and achieves that sort of sublime experience.

Actually, as I awaited the beginning of NIN's set, I got a bit anxious. After all, Fragility was such a visually revolutionary production that I had to wonder what could be done for an encore. How could Trent top that? I mean, really, he couldn't. But thankfully, he's still ahead of the curve, even if there's less that's drastically new from With Teeth that will inspire copycats for the next several years.

Vaguely reminiscent of Fragility, With Teeth opened with the band beginning to play behind a curtain. Only this time it wasn't a black curtain in front of a pounding strobe light, but a translucent white one, and this time they didn't remain behind the curtain until the completion of "Somewhat Damaged," but quickly transitioned from "Pinion" to a ripping version of "Love Is Not Enough" as the curtain lifted.

There were many things I really appreciated about this show. For one, there was a terrific mix of songs. The set list featured about half the songs off With Teeth, but ranged far and wide across the NIN catalog, with the better tracks off the debut, Pretty Hate Machine, healthy doses from the classic The Downward Spiral and the epic tour de force The Fragile. But then there were songs off the often overlooked but outstanding extended LP Broken, as well as "Burn" from the "Natural Born Killers" soundtrack and "Deep" from the "Tomb Raider" soundtrack. And, best of all, we got to hear a new, unreleased track, "Not So Pretty Now," which pushes musically in a different direction for Trent. All outstanding choices. There were 22 songs in total they played about two hours, and it was fabulous. Some songs were missing from the set list that I would've loved to have heard, in particular "The Great Below," "Into the Void," "The Day the Whole World Went Away" and "Somewhat Damaged" -- OK, really I wanted to hear The Fragile in its entirety, plus the rest of the NIN catalog. ("The Perfect Drug" springs to mind as a non-Fragile track.) But I can't complain about hearing as much as I did.

Musically, it was also rewarding in that the versions of several songs varied widely from the album versions. While I really, really like "Only" off With Teeth and find its campy, New Wave-ish beat a perfect underpinning for the tongue-in-cheek lyrics (it's also a great dance song), the harder version was sonically powerful. Likewise, variations on "Sin" and others made me feel like I was getting treated to one of the many NIN remix albums that are actually worth eight bucks.

THe highlight of the concert for me, though, was in the middle of the set. The curtain came down again, and suddenly it made sense. As in, it was a sort of mesh material that could be used as a screen onto which video was projected. The best part was during "Right Where It Belongs," when it played a montage of clips of happy people juxtaposed with images of destruction, the perfect illustration of the political (and other) meanings of the song. So, old clips of dozens of couples ballroom dancing in their finest were interspersed with images of supersonic bombers destroying desert landscapes. It was so profoundly tragic and emotionally resonant that I felt close to tears. And then, in case anyone in the crowd was too stupid to pick up on the allusion (and I'm not putting that past this crowd -- more on that later), there was a final scene of ballroom dancing with George and Laura Bush in the middle. That elicited several middle fingers and "fuck yous," and might have been the high-water mark for audience participation.

Seriously, that was the worst part of the entire show. The crowd was practically dead. The overwhelming majority of people in the seats remained on their asses for the entirety of the show, and even down in the floor where I was there wasn't a lot of energy. It was a stark contrast to the raw adrenaline and sweat coursing through the stage and through those few of us in the crowd who actually had a pulse. At one point Trent seemed to look into the stands and almost shrug his shoulders in that sort of "what gives?" way. I felt deeply ashamed to have been in that audience and I also felt embarrassed for Trent and the band to get such a lukewarm reception. I've heard that Seattle crowds are kind of low key, and I know the culture here is laid back, but give it a break. This was the epicenter of the whole grunge movement. Did folks just sort of watch quietly when Nirvana and Pearl Jam were in their primes? At several points in the show I kept being reminded of the lyrics from Nirvana's "In Bloom" ("He's the one/He likes all our pretty songs/And he likes to sing along/And he likes to shoot his gun/But he knows not what it means"). Perhaps this was Kurt Cobain's ode to Seattle concertgoers.

The strange part of the evening was provided by Trent Reznor's physical appearance. It took me at least 20 minutes to get over the fact that he now has a shaved head, and his sleeveless leather shirt revealed some large, well-sculpted arms. He looked more like he just got out of the military rather than a recording studio. It was a bit offputting, if only because it was thoroughly unexpected.

So, in sum, NIN rocked, Seattle crowds sucked, and I will once again wait impatiently and pay whatever it takes to get to see Trent live again.

Actual bumpersticker

Seen today on the back of a scooter in Seattle:

"75 mpg: Suck it, big oil!"

Cat food

German scientist has apparently developed a process for converting cat cadavers into diesel fuel..

According to the story, it takes about 20 dead cats to yield a full tank, though it didn't specify the size of the tank or the kind of car. But I'm sure an SUV would require a larger number of cats for the same mileage. (PETA must be thrilled about the thought of that.)

Just imagine the possibilities, though. Instead of fighting wars on countries rich in oil, we could start launching wars against countries rich in cats. (Uh, Siam?)

Of course, I must caution that heightened demand for dead cats could destabilize a longstanding equilibrium, causing dogs to gain an insurmountable advantage over cats and thus become an unchecked superpower of the animal kingdom.

At least we know where Dubya got it from

You have to love (read: loathe) compassionate conservatism.

Take ex-First Lady Barbara Bush, who showed her sympathy for Katrina refugees in that special Bush way:

"What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas," Barbara Bush said in an interview on Monday with the radio program "Marketplace." "Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality."

"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway," she said, "so this is working very well for them."

Right. The myth of welfare mothers lives, even as corporate welfare fathers (Halliburton, anyone?) get ever fatter suckling at the government's teat.

And I'm sure the evacuees' desire to remain in Texas has nothing to do with the fact that, you know, their homes and everything else they left behind in Louisiana are in ruins. I mean, just because there's nothing but devastation left, that's no reason they shouldn't want to return to the nothingness.

Snakes alive!

Thomas Friedman (yes, that Thomas Friedman) has written a stunningly good column, lambasting Bush-Cheney for all the right reasons.

I don't think Tom's taken a turn toward the left, but at the very least he's shown that, once in a blue moon, he's capable of intelligent critical thinking.

Graphic

Arrr!

This could be one way to spruce up the first day of the TA training conference.

International Talk Like a Pirate Day, coming to a gangplank near you, September 19.

You know Avril Lavigne is punk because her corporate-produced t-shirt says so much

I'm resisting my kneejerk reaction to lambaste the New York Times arts page as a whole. After all, one must keep in mind the Frank Rich's outstanding column began on the arts page before getting relocated to the op-ed page where he greatly outshines the middling-at-best columnists who also populate that section of the newspaper.

But this idiotic piece from a so-called "music critic" about Hilary Duff and the supposed "love affair between punk and pop."

Evidently Duff is now collaborating with her boyfriend, some guy from the atrocious band Good Charlotte, to make pop music that, according to critic Kelefa Sanneh, has "punk" elements.

And here's the best part: the music they're making is really good.

Throughout the 1990's, the default genre for young pop stars was R&B; most of the time, teen-pop - for example, Britney Spears or 'N Sync - was merely R&B by another name. Then came the astronomical rise of Avril Lavigne, alongside kid-friendly punk bands like Blink-182, and it soon became clear that teen-punk made a sneaky kind of sense. Kids loved the hint of rebellion, parents loved the lack of sex. And as punk bands got more squeaky-clean (a trend that peaked, perhaps, with the cheerful, violin-enhanced band Yellowcard), pop stars like Ashlee Simpson got more brazen about creating their own, radically defanged form of punk.

I don't even know where to begin dissecting this excerpt, or the article as a whole. Suffice it to say that this critic (and Duff, Avril "I don't know how to pronounce David Bowie's name" Lavigne, etc.) wouldn't know punk if it jumped out of the mosh pit at a Fugazi show at CBGB's and stabbed them in the eye with a safety pin.

The whole notion of "squeaky-clean" and defanged punk isn't even oxymoronic; it's the sort of nonsensical fallacy that could only be spewed by someone with a dilettantish knowledge of punk.

But then, what would you expect from a "critic" who suggests that Hilary Duff should be taken seriously as a musician, or at all?