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LUDIC LOG

In my attempt to make this web log just like every other one, and also because I'm lazy, today's entry will be a list of things I really like. This will also serve the purpose of disproving the commonly held notion that I hate everything.

1. I like My Name Is Rar-Rar. I went to see them last night at the Double Door -- a headline gig, the first time I've seen them top a bill -- and they did not falter. The place was pretty emptied out by the time they played, and I had the not-unfamiliar sensation of wanting to grab one of the people in the crowd and scream "don't you realize how fucking good this band is?" at them. I was accompanied by a couple of friends who had never heard them before, and they were as immediately struck by Rar-Rar as I was the first time I heard them. Their sound check was more interesting than the rest of the bands' whole sets. I know you're probably sick of hearing it, but this is a great, great band, and you can hear, feel, and see how goddamn passionate they are about making surprising things happen musically and bringing something incredible out of the air. They're in the studio in January.

2. I like David Cross' "Shut Up You Fucking Baby!". It's a double CD of the "comedy stylings" of the Jewy half of the insanely good Mr. Show with Bob & David. Yes, a double CD! Of comedy! And it doesn't suck! David Cross is vicious, mean, and incredibly funny. This CD, which just came out, is like the best of Bill Hicks, only not crazy. Or the best of Lenny Bruce, only not stuffed full of horse. Or...look, it's really fucking funny, so go buy it. I'm listening to at as I type, and I am laughing like a goddamn jackass.

3. I like Chicago. It's the city I live in, and that I have chosen. I can't imagine living anywhere else. This is a corrupt, beautiful, energetic, tragic, dynamic, sad, insane city. Not a day goes by that I'm not amazed or amused at something in this swampy gray tract of shoreline, and I haven't seen a hundredth of it. I've lived in some crappy big cities (Dallas, TX), some really crappy bigger cities (Phoenix, AZ), and some really, really crappy huge cities (Los Angeles, CA), but Chicago is constantly revealing itself to me. Come visit here; it's an incredible place and a great, great city.

4. I like Jim Thompson. He gets the shaft, since he lives in the genre fiction ghetto; it's a good part of the ghetto -- the crime noir section, where Raymond Chandler almost managed to escape -- but it's still not, you know, literature. He was a hack; he wrote lots of hackwork; and he was also a seriously fucked-up individual. But he was a master storyteller; he wrote with a palpable sense of menace and danger; his dialogue was uncannily good, and he communicated a sense of personal evil like no writer since Dostoievsky. His stories are remarkably artful and eminently readable. While a few films and the excellent Vintage Black Lizard series have made many of his finest books newly available, and there's a great biography of him out, he still doesn't have the wide audience he deserves. He and Patricia Highsmith are similar in many ways (a huge amount of skill at conveying evil, excellent dialogue, a terrific ability to set a scene, and a standoffish, sexy approach to sociopathic behavior that never seems exploitative or obvious). She's enjoying a much-deserved renaissance right now; he should too.

5. I like Kate Winslet. She's pretty. What? They can't all be profound. As this entry illustrates in spades.