El debate sobre las imágenes de la ejecución

The apparently imminent execution of the deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein threw executives at television news organizations into hurried consultations today over how to handle pictures or video of the hanging.
Though it was not known whether images of the execution would be released, the news divisions at ABC and CBS said that, should video become available, they will show some visual documentation of Saddam’s death but will not use overly graphic images or show complete execution.
NBC News, however, indicated it might go further. Steve Capus, the president of NBC News, said that network may show “a wide shot of Saddam hanging.” He said NBC would make its decision based on questions both of taste and of history.

Tomado del New York Times

La Filosofía Playboy

John Leland fue el encargado de reseñar para el New York Times el nuevo libro THE NEW BEDSIDE PLAYBOY. A Half Century of Amusement, Diversion & Entertainment que es una especie de antología de la filosofía de Playboy que según el crítico es como una fiesta idílica de textos donde hay invitados como Vladimir Nabokov, T. C. Boyle, Michael Chabon, Jorge Luis Borges, Joyce Carol Oates, Jonathan Safran Foer, Jimmy Breslin, Thom Jones, Norman Mailer y John Updike, entre varios más:

In the first issue of Playboy magazine, published in December 1953, Hugh M. Hefner wrote an essay speaking for its envisioned readers: “We like our apartment. We enjoy mixing up cocktails and an hors d’oeuvre or two, putting a little mood music on the phonograph, and inviting in a female acquaintance for a quiet discussion on Picasso, Nietzsche, jazz, sex.” On first blush his commercial strategy here seemed straightforward: Men who make a habit of inviting female acquaintances in to talk Picasso, Nietzsche, jazz and sex will have a lot of free nights for reading Playboy magazine. Empires have been built on lesser principles.

Yet the evidence presented in “The New Bedside Playboy: A Half Century of Amusement, Diversion & Entertainment” suggests a more ambitious grand plan. With its ribald jokes and cartoons, airbrushed “pictorials” and prose selections from America’s best-paid writers — all wrapped up into a glossy connoisseurship that Mr. Hefner called the “Playboy Philosophy” — the magazine can be seen as a mad plot: to create a race of men more boring and insecure than any before. As Mr. Hefner later proposed, “Playboy exists, in part, as a motivation for men to expend greater effort in their work, develop their capabilities further and climb higher on the ladder of success.”

The fix was in from the start. It held sway over American men until the arrival of a medium even more effective at replacing male curiosity with useless pudding: 24-hour sports television. Mr. Hefner introduces the current volume, which has no photographs of naked women, with the wisdom, attributed to an “anonymous sage,” that “most of man’s great pleasures can be found between a book’s covers and beneath a bed’s coverlet,” setting the appropriate tone for this silken time capsule.

Who cites anonymous sages these days? And who talks of coverlets? This collection, he promises, distills 53 years’ worth of “visual tonics,” “light fantastics,” “danses macabres” and “nostalgic frolicking in the snows of yesteryear.” By this he means mainly short stories, but there are also essays, reminiscences, four pages of “party jokes,” 21 mostly dirty cartoons and a long interview in which Saul Bellow is asked what he thought about the O. J. trial (“in California the whole justice system is in deep trouble”) and whether he has known any actors intimately (only Marilyn Monroe, and not in that sense).

Begun five years after the first Kinsey report, “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male,” Playboy shifted performance anxiety into a realm guys could master, with a little help from a magazine: the right hi-fi gear, the right Bordeaux and the right literary references. It is with erotic aplomb that Mr. Hefner refers to his publication in “The New Bedside Playboy” as “America’s most sophisticated magazine.”

The mix of writers comprises a dream party guest list, albeit heavy on the Y chromosomes: Vladimir Nabokov, T. C. Boyle, Michael Chabon, Jorge Luis Borges, Joyce Carol Oates, Jonathan Safran Foer, Jimmy Breslin, Thom Jones, Norman Mailer, John Updike and dozens more boldface names. But if you have read any of these writers before, you have probably caught them in better form. No man who knows his way around a coverlet needs Nabokov to supply pickup lines like: “Yes, we Russians are sentimental eccentrics, but believe me, we can love with the passion of a Rasputin and the naïveté of a child. You are lonely and I am lonely. You are free and I am free. Who, then, can forbid us to spend several pleasant hours is a sheltered love nest?” A sheltered love nest? Tell me there’s not a plot afoot here.

In the 1950s and 1960s Cavalier, Nugget, Escapade and other euphemistically dubbed “men’s magazines” published some of the most adventurous new writing in the United States, jump-starting or sustaining the careers of Mario Puzo, Bruce Jay Friedman, Terry Southern, Jack Kerouac and others. The magazines could risk a little raunch, so they were in the right place for the earthier fiction emerging from the margins. The writers collected in “The New Bedside Playboy,” by contrast, are established brand names, apparently selling from the back of their files. One thing about the Playboy mystique: the paychecks were real. And it is good to know there is still a remunerative home for an Ian Fleming story that begins, “The stingray was about six feet from wing tip to wing tip and perhaps 10 feet long from the blunt wedge of its nose to the end of its deadly tail,” or a David Mamet rant that vents, in support of both the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Rifle Association: “Well, then. We are not too far removed from the viciousness that follows curtailing freedom of the press; e.g., the Red scare of the Fifties and its attempts at rebirth. Neither are we too far removed from the terror that can visit itself on a disarmed populace: the Czechs of Prague Spring, the Jews of Europe under the Third Reich.” Without such diversions we’d have only the present.

Was there really a time when swingers imagined themselves in silk jammies chatting about Nabokov and Brubeck and the latest Cognac? No doubt. Ring-a-ding-ding. The right literary reference, the right hi-fi gear, and voilà: the freedom to go home alone, unswung, to a bit of light fiction, corny jokes and an airbrush that liberated the white-collar male from the uncomfortable burden of human curiosity.

Mojo Picks 2006

Ahora fue la lista de Media Picks 2006 de la publicación alternativa Mother Jones la que llego a mis ojos. Ahí detallan cuales son los libros, discos, revistas, programas de TV y películas ineludibles de este 2006 para el staff de esa revista, cuyo slogan de batalla es Smart, Fearless Journalism:

Libros

La lista de libros la encabeza una obra con un título muy atractivo y hasta aspiracional: Talking Right: How Conservatives turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show de Geoffrey Nunberg.

Luego viene lo que luce como una historia impresionante: Our Town: A Heartland Lynching, a Haunted Town, and the Hidden History of White America de Cynthia Carr y que se inspira en la foto de un linchamiento en Indiana para reconstruir la historia y los remordimientos de una comunidad.

La lista se complemente con más libros, algunos de los cuales lucen magníficos y que sin duda no podré leer nunca por falta de tiempo:

Lost Mountain: A Year in the Vanishing Wilderness de Erik Reece: “Reece spent much of 2003 and 2004 watching a mining company "topping" a Kentucky mountain—dynamiting its peak off to scoop out the coal inside. He makes a powerful case that modern, hi-tech coal mines are not much better than those of old country songs…”

The Female Thing: Dirt, Sex, Envy, Vulnerability de Laura Kipnis

The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America’s Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11 de Ron Suskind

Blood Money: A Story of Wasted Billions, Lost Lives, and Corporate Greed in Ira de T. Christian Miller

The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter de Peter Singer y Jim Mason

You Must Set Forth at Dawn: A Memoir de Wole Soyinka: “In his dense new memoir, he recounts the paradox of being a private artist and a compulsive public figure, a split that Soyinka has managed to navigate with clear-eyed pragmatism.”

An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories. Editado por Ivan Brunetti/In the Studio: Visits with Contemporary Cartoonists de Todd Hignite: “Yale University Press made a bold entry into the comics publishing biz with these beautifully packaged titles. Brunetti’s idiosyncratic anthology is packed with short but arresting work from familiar names such as Dan Clowes, Chris Ware, Joe Sacco, and Seth, as well as many underexposed talents. It’s perfectly complemented by Hignite’s in-depth interviews with Clowes, Ware, Seth, Brunetti, and five other big-name penmen.”

Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984 de Simon Reynolds: “Reynolds convincingly argues that ’80s postpunk was the most fertile and influential musical period since the Summer of Love. Encompassing everything from Joy Division to Gang of Four to the Specials to Talking Heads to (gasp!) Human League—it’s the perfect nostalgia trip for the perennial grad student who still rocks the stovepipe jeans”

The Discomfort Zone de Jonathan Franzen: “The novelist recounts his childhood fears (“spiders, insomnia, fish hooks, school dances, hardball, heights, bees, urinals, puberty, music teachers, dogs, the school cafeteria, censure, older teenagers, jellyfish, locker rooms, boomerangs, popular girls”), awkward adolescence, and adulthood struggle to become a wildly successful writer.

Música

Pick a Bigger Weapon de The Coup: “This Oakland rap duo has been around since the early ’90s, but this album, its first in five years, is the most musically rich.”

Show Your Bones de los Yeah Yeah Yeahs

With Strings: Live at Town Hall de Eels (casi los había olvidado): “This live album captures über-Eel Mark Oliver Everett’s gift for writing songs that burrow into your cerebral cortex and torment you with heartbreaking hooks and gorgeous melodies”

Post-War de M. Ward

Begin to Hope de Regina Spektor

Marie Antoinette (Soundtrack)

Long Walk to Freedom de Ladysmith Black Mambazo

Yell Fire! de Michael Franti y Spearhead

20/20 de Dilated Peoples

All the Roadrunning de Emmylou Harris and Mark Knopfler

A Blessing and a Curse de Drive-By Truckers

Fox Confessor Brings the Flood de Neko Case

The Information de Beck

The Ricky Gervais Show (Podcast)

Paste: “This year, I’ve given this Canadian-based music/pop culture magazine to a dozen-odd friends. Why? Really, it’s all about the CDs Paste sends with each issue. Containing a pitch-perfect mix of songs that run a gamut of styles—mostly alt-pop with a singer-songwriter bent—they’re a great way to sample a lot of new music if you’re too busy to live at the iTunes site. Oh, and the magazine is pretty cool too.”

TV y Films (las más escuetas de sus picks)

Battlestar Galactica

This Film Is Not Yet Rated

49 Up

Grey Gardens

Boobs in a box

Trabajar en Rolling Stone

Formar parte del staff de la revista Rolling Stone estará al alcance de la mano para seis jóvenes aspirantes, tres hombres y tres mujeres. Todos ellos se disputarán un puesto de trabajo, en el nuevo reality show de MTV “I’m from Rolling Stone”. Los escritores fueron seleccionados de entre un nutrido casting de miles de solicitudes, y ya enfrentaron sus primeros retos reseñando las incidencias de conciertos, como el afamado como Lollapalooza. Entre sus deberes estarán no únicamente la entrega de perfiles de grupos, sino además artículos sobre el escenario político en Estados Unidos y la cultura pop. Sobra decir que esta experiencia entre reporteros, desde las entrañas de la Rolling Stone, estará documentada por varios camarógrafos.

Recomendaciones llamativas

Richard Irvine en su blog hizo un Top 5 de sus lecturas del 2006 que resulta interesante, además de que cuenta con el soporte de poner en el 1 a Las Asombrosas Aventuras de Kavalier y Clay:

5. Kitchen Confidential / A Cook's Tour - Anthony Bourdain.
Probably the coolest guy in the world - writes how he talks, and is really funny. I love reading about garlic and knives, and picked up a few tips about cooking for nothing. I loved the chapter about his trip back to France with his brother, and was extremly jealous of his Mexican feast.

4. Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs - Chuck Klosterman.
Klosterman reminds me of the two guys in Human Traffic talking about how Yoda was a stoner (hence the reason he had the power and spoke back to front)... not that that's a bad thing. Chuck is the US indie kids' darling right now and in these essays, he comes across like a neurotic first year arts student with a wardrobe of alphabetically arranged band t-shirts. That's not necessarily a bad thing (ahem), but I'd like him to lighten up a bit. He can really write, and I particularly enjoyed the essay about his trip to see a Guns n Roses tribute band play.

3. Southern Style - Craig Marriner.
I always thought there was a really good book to be written about the Antipodean UK experience - I'm not sure this is it, but it's bloody close. The 'Tri-nations' characters are all utterly believable, with a few cockney wide boys and random gangsters thrown in for good measure. From his detailed knowledge of the London party scene, and the rock and roll bio, you'd say Marriner's done some serious time in pubs, bars and dive-y flats around the world, and made his dirty London really come alive. I really enjoyed Southern Style, and just felt it was a little long in places - it's a very DENSE read. I'm definitely tracking down Stone Dogs, his first novel over the hols, though.

2. Departure Lounge / Electric - Chad Taylor.
Chad Taylor fuckin ROCKS, his Auckland is dark and humid, where shady characters lurk in the Westhaven Marina, or the Stanley Street gully. Mt Hobson, K Road nightclubs and art galleries, and even the Chelsea sugar works feature in these books, almost always at night, and I was thrilled every time these places were mentioned. These are the best Auckland books I've read, evoking the beauty this town offers, but making it dangerous and cool, too.

1. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay - Michael Chabon.
This is a fantastic book (thanks Mum!). It is the story of Joe Kavalier's escape from WWII Prague to New York, where he and his cousin Sam Clay create a comic book super hero. The Escapist becomes a huge smash, and we follow their rise to stardom, as they meet Orson Welles, Salvador Dali, and Stan Lee, amongst others, as they find fame and (some) fortune, until America enters the war and it all starts to unravel. This is a bit of an epic (over 600 pages), and a fantastic, ripping yarn. Very highly recommended.

Giovanni´s Room

Ruth en su post The Delinquent English Major hizo que despertara mi curiosidad hacia James Baldwin: "I could say that Giovanni's Room is sort of an offshoot of the whole Hemingway/Fitzgerald/Lost Generation movement, and I'd be wrong (it's written much later, for one thing) but the fact is that fans of that school will probably find much to like in the straightforward prose style and the story of three people ruining their lives in post-war Paris, amidst much drinking, because they're unable to face the truth about themselves and one another".

El Chiringuito girls

Ellas son Melya, Alyson y Lupe. En ese orden de izquierda a derecha. Las tres son mexicanas. Melya radica en la Ciudad de México, Alyson es originaria de Ecatepec y Lupe de Nezahualcoyotl, en el Estado de México. Al menos eso dice un banner que aparece al consultar las estadísticas de El Chiringuito. Un mensaje adjunto invita a concertar una cita con cualquiera de ellas ¿Será?

Monica Lewinsky se gradúa en el London School of Economics

Monica Lewinsky, la que fuera la becaria más conocida del mundo, por sus aventuras sexuales con Bill Clinton, acaba de hacerse con un título de posgrado en Londres con una tesis titulada "In search of the impartial juror: an exploration of the third person effect and pre- trial publicity" (En busca de un juez imparcial: el efecto de la tercera persona y la publicidad antes del juicio). "Fue un momento muy emotivo para ella", comenta su representante, Barbara Hutson, mientras explica que la joven se quedará en el Reino Unido buscando trabajo.

La misma mujer que en 1998 pusiera de rodillas al presidente de EE UU se recluyó durante el último año en las bibliotecas de la prestigiosa London School of Economics para sacar adelante sus estudios.

Una década después, la ceremonia de entrega del título pasaba inadvertida hasta que salió publicada en la última edición de la revista People. Lewinsky entraba así en la lista de celebridades que han pasado por la escuela londinense, entre las que se encuentran Mick Jagger, algún presidente, primeros ministros y laureados con el Nobel.

Tomada de El País

¿Cómo decimos Navidad?*

How We Say Christmas

What would you say if you had to explain Christmas to someone who knew nothing about it? You might begin with the shepherds in the fields by night or Santa at the North Pole or even the druidic appeal of a winter festival that comes just when the sun seems most meager. Redemption and rejoicing, feasting and singing, humility and awe — these would all be parts of your answer, as would the perennial cast of characters who people this turning time of year. The personal explanations would come easiest: the rituals of Christmas Eve, the smell of fresh balsam, the stillness of a world cloaked in snow. You would probably have something to say about the importance of family and the force of a holiday whose strongest emotions center upon children, and upon our memories of being children.

And yet to really explain Christmas you would also have to try to answer the question that seems more pressing every year: how do those emotions and memories connect to the frenzied commercial machinery of the weeks that lead up to Christmas? What does all that retailing and wrapping paper have to do with peace on earth? There is no glossing over the problem — not to a puzzled stranger and not to ourselves. What matters is not just the disjunction between the majesty of those old hymns and the immodesty of this shopping season. It is that all those presents did not really catch the feeling we were looking for, did not say what we hoped to say.

A stranger might well wonder, don’t you always hope for peace on earth? Does good will really have a season? And if you genuinely love one another — truly hold one another in your hearts — wouldn’t simply saying it be far more eloquent than any other gift that you could give? These questions point to something most of us already know, that for all the push and pull of the Christmas rush, for all the sputtering of the commercial volcano that erupts at the end of every year, this is truly a holiday of modest spirit, a day of humble aspirations. What we want is to love and know we are loved and to imagine a world that lives up to the purity of that feeling.

*Editorial del New York Times

Big Tasty en Navidad

Hace unos minutos estaba comiendo una hamburguesa en un McDonalds, concretamente una Big Tasty. Quería hielo para mi refresco y la máquina no daba cubitos, justo entonces me di cuenta que la música ambiental era de Thalía. Decepcionado empecé a comer mi hamburguesa y cuando estaba lo suficientemente batido de catsup, queso fundido y mostaza, noté que no tenía ninguna servilleta cerca. Unos tipos con gorros de raperos me miraban con desconfianza cuando el desconfiado debía ser yo. Finalmente me limpié, terminé de comer, salí del restaurante y me encaminé de vuelta a la oficina. No la Navidad soñada, en definitiva.

Para Gabriel, el Mini-Shaq

Gabriel simpre se ha sentido atraído por chicas con apariencia de orientales (chinas, japonesas, tailandesas, koreanas) y al ver el siguiente video supuse que bien puede servir para ejemplificar cual sería sueño, pero también su pesadilla:



Video de No me destruyas de Zoé

Tarantino & Rodríguez

Ya puede verse el trailer del nuevo proyecto de Quentin Tarantino y Robert Rodríguez. Tienen una hora de duración cada uno de ellos, y se planea exhibirlos como una sola película.

James Brown, in memoriam

Una lista más

Luego de ver el condensado de la lista de los mejores álbumes del año según Spin, Rolling Stone y Filter, me hicieron llegar una más que incluye discos de la escena local mexicana, grupos internacionales que recibieron buen recibimiento aquí y elecciones de acuerdo a las fijaciones, gustos y pretenciones de quienes hicieron el conteo. Se trata de los mejores albumes del 2006, según Sonika:

1.- Muse, Black Holes and Revelations

2.- Zoé, Memo Rex Commander y el Corazón Atómico de la Vía Láctea

3.- Wolfmother, Wolfmother

4.- Arctic Monkeys, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not

5.- Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Show Your Bones

6.- The Killers, Sam´s Town

7.- Hot Chip, The Warning

8.- The Rapture, Pieces of the People We Love

9.- Blanco Fácil, Chetes

10.- Thom Yorke, The Eraser

11.- TV on the Radio, Return to Cookie Mountain

12.- Tool, 10,000 Days

13.- Kasabyan, Empire

14.- Morrisey, Ringleader of the tormentors

15.- Phoenix, It´s never been like that

16.- The Flaming Lips, At war with the mystics

17.- The Strokes, First Impressions of Earth

18.- My Chemical Romance, The Black Parade

19.- Gnarls Barckley, St Elsewhere

20.- The Raconteurs, Broken Boy Soldiers

21.- Cansei de ser sexy, CSS

22.- Scissor Sisters, Ta Dah

23.- Beck, The Information

24.- Gustavo Cerati, Ahí vamos

25.- Tape´sN Tapes, The Loons

26.- She wants revenge, She wants revenge

27.- Brakes, Give Blood

28.- Keane, Under the iron sea

29.- Cat Power, The Greatest

30.- Los Dynamite, Greatest Hits

Spin vs Rolling Stone vs Filter

Tras mi decepción por estar fuera de la jugada según la lista de los mejores discos del año, según Spin, decidi compararla con las de Rolling Stone y Filter. Las diferencias de concepto entre las tres marcan las divergencias en sus listados, es decir Rolling stone más clásica y conservadora; Spin, en el centro y Filter más alternativa. Lo interesante es ver cuales son los álbumes que más se repiten en una lista corta de los 28+ para ver efectivamente a que vale la pena echarle un oído.

1.-
TV on the Radio, Return to Cookie Mountain (Spin)
Bob Dylan, Modern Times(Rolling Stone)
Band of Horses, Everything All The Time (Filter)

2.
Gnarls Barkley, St. Elsewhere (Spin)
Red Hot Chili Peppers, Stadium Arcadium (Rolling Stone)
TV on the Radio, Return to Cookie Mountain (Filter)

3.
Arctic Monkeys, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not (Spin)
Sonic Youth, Rather Ripped (Rolling Stone)
Built to Spill, You In Reverse (Filter)

4.
Ghostface Killah, Fishscale (Spin)
TV on the Radio, Return to Cookie Mountain (Rolling Stone)
Silversun Pickups, Carnavas (Filter)

5.
My Chemical Romance, The Black Parade (Spin)
Ghostface Killah, Fishscale (Rolling Stone)
Cold War Kids Robbers & Cowards (Filter)

6.
Joanna Newsom, Ys (Spin)
Cat Power, The Greatest (Rolling Stone)
Cat Power, The Greatest (Filter)

7.
Cat Power, The Greatest (Spin)
Clipse, Hell Hath No Fury (Rolling Stone)
Gnarls Barkley, St. Elsewhere (Filter)

8.
My Morning Jacket, Okonokos (Spin)
The Hold Steady, Boys and Girls in America (Rolling Stone)
Belle & Sebastian, The Life Pursuit (Filter)

9.
Clipse, Hell Hath No Fury (Spin)
Mastodon, Blood Mountain (Rolling Stone)
Jeremy Enigk, World Waits (Filter)

10.
Beck, The Information (Spin)
Tom Waits, Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards (Rolling Stone)
Brightblack Morning Light, Brightblack Morning Light (Filter)

11.-
The Decemberists, The Crane Wife (Spin)
Continuum, John Meyer (Rolling Stone)
Sound Team, Movie Monster (Filter)

12.-
Hot Chip, The Warning (Spin)
The New York Dolls, One day it will please us to remember even this (Rolling Stone)
The Decemberists, The Crane Wife (Filter)

13.-
Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins, Rabbit Fur Coat (Spin)
Pearl Jam, Pearl Jam (Rolling Stone)
Aterciopelados, Oye (Filter)

14.-
T.I., King (Spin)
Johnny Cash, American V: A hundred highways (Rolling Stone)
Dirty On Purpose, Hallelujah Sirens (Filter)

15.-
Lady Sovereign, Public Warning (Spin)
Wolfmother, Wolfmother (Rolling Stone)
Fields, 7 From the Village (Filter)

16.-
Editors, The Back Room (Spin)
Lupe Fiasco, Food & Liquor (Rolling Stone)
Gilles Peterson and Patric Forge, Sunday Afternoon at Dingwalls (Filter)

17.-
Neko Case, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood (Spin)
Arctic Monkeys, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not (Rolling Stone)
Mew, And The Glass Handed Kites (Filter)

18.-
The Streets, The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living (Spin)
The Roots, Game Theory (Rolling Stone)
Mogwai, Mr. Beast (Filter)

19.-
The Raconteurs, Broken Boy Soldiers (Spin)
Dixie Chicks, Taking the long way (Rolling Stone)
Mojave 3, Puzzles Like You (Filter)

20.-
Lupe Fiasco, Food & Liquor (Spin)
My Chemical Romance, The Black Parade (Rolling Stone)
Morrissey, Ringleader of the Tormentors (Filter)

21.-
The Hold Steady, Boys and Girls in America (Spin)
Regina Spektor, Begin to hope (Rolling Stone)
My Brightest Diamond, Bring Me The Workhorse (Filter)

22.-
Sonic Youth, Rather Ripped (Spin)
Girl Talk, Night Ripper (Rolling Stone)
Pearl Jam, Pearl Jam (Filter)

23.-
The Roots, Game Theory (Spin)
The Decemberists, The Crane Wife (Rolling Stone)
Swan Lake, Beast Moans (Filter)

24.-
Pernice Brothers, Live a Little (Spin)
Beck, The Information (Rolling Stone)
T.I., King (Filter)

25.-
OutKast, Idlewild (Spin)
Rhymefest, Blue Collar (Rolling Stone)
The Black Keys, Magic Potion (Filter)

26.-
Boris, Pink (Spin)
Future Sex/Love Sounds, Justin Timberlake (Rolling Stone)
The Flaming Lips, At War With the Mystics (Filter)

27.-
Girl Talk, Night Ripper (Spin)
Pieces of the people we love, The Rapture (Rolling Stone)
The Hold Steady, Boys And Girls In America (Filter)

28.-
Thom Yorke, The Eraser
Raconteurs, Broken Boy Soldiers (Rolling Stone)
Tom Waits, Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards (Filter)

De acuerdo con esa lista corta, podemos hacer una más corta con los álbumes más repetidos y mejor colocados en promedio en las listas. Este es el resultado:


1.- TV on the Radio, Return to Cookie Mountain
2.- Cat Power, The Greatest
3.- The Decemberists, The Crane Wife
4.- The Hold Steady, Boys and Girls in America
5.- Ghostface Killah, Fishscale
5.- Gnarls Barkley, St. Elsewhere
7.- Clipse, Hell Hath No Fury
8.- Arctic Monkeys, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
9.- My Chemical Romance, The Black Parade
10.- Sonic Youth, Rather Ripped
11.- Pearl Jam, Pearl Jam
12.- Beck, The Information
12.- Lupe Fiasco, Food & Liquor
14.- Tom Waits, Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards
14.- T.I., King
16.- The Roots, Game Theory
17.- The Raconteurs, Broken Boy Soldiers
18.- Cold War Kids Robbers & Cowards

Tarjetas navideñas a Guantánamo

It's a well-established tradition for Americans at home to deliver Christmas cheer to U.S. soldiers stationed around the world, but it turns out that prisoners held in the War on Terror are getting good tidings of their own, too.

Chetes*

LAST October a quiet and unassuming 26-year-old musician from México arrived at Nashville International Airport to meet an American record producer he had known only through a few e-mail messages and a phone conversation. Neither had any idea what the other looked like.

The musician was Gerardo Garza, the floppy-haired, dirty-blonde It Boy of the alternative rock scene in Monterrey, Mexico, who goes by his lifelong nickname, Chetes. (It’s Spanish shorthand for “cheeks”; Mr. Garza’s are noticeably pale and round.) The producer was Ken Coomer, a Nashville studio whiz who played drums for the new-school Americanists Wilco and Uncle Tupelo, two bands Mr. Garza had only recently heard.

The plan for the next month was simple, if not somewhat comical: the two would hole up in a studio with local musicians and technicians — none of whom spoke a word of Spanish — and create the new sound of Mexican pop music.

*Primeros tres párrafos de un artículo publicado hoy en el New York Times.

Alto nivel

Kimota 94 asegura en su blog que actualmente los cómics están en un nivel muy alto y que en el futuro, si no mantienen su calidad, estarán en problemas. Kimota94 asegura que esto se debe a los adelantos en la ilustración, pero sobre todo a la incorporación al mundo del cómic de narradores que vienen de otros ámbitos de acción.

The most recent wave of writers, though, have come in larger numbers and provided what seems like a much more promising vehicle for it to continue: bring in men and women who've proved their literary skill elsewhere, have an interest in comics and allow them to play with these toys from their childhood for awhile. A list of the past, present and future examples of this would include Kevin Smith, Brad Meltzer, Joss Whedon, Greg Rucka, Jodi Picoult, Stephen King, Allan Heinberg, Kevin J. Anderson, Orson Scott Card, Michael Chabon, Jonathon Lethem and Damon Lindelof, among others.

Felon, escrito por Greg Rucka

Clipse

Cocaína y música Rap es una combinación adictiva. Al menos así lo ha sido para los hermanos Gene y Terrence Thornton, un dueto que bajo el nombre Clipse, se ha hecho de un lugar en la música Hip-hop. Con el álbum Hell Hath No Fury, los hermanos demuestran de lo que son capaces. Para ello eligieron los nombres artísticos de Malice y Pusha T. Ocupan el lugar número 8, en el conteo de los 40 mejores discos del 2006 para la revista SPIN –que ya mencionaba M. En palabras de Malice, la propuesta de Clipse representa la civilización perdida del hip-hop; es al mismo tiempo un exponente del Gangsta Rap, y en opinión de críticos especializados, una referencia necesaria para entender un nuevo subgénero: el cocaine rap.

Shasa Frere-Jones reseña en las páginas de la revista The New Yorker, que hace unos meses, la cocaína fue colocada en un nuevo pedestal, fue despojada de cualquier síntoma profano tras ser calificada por la revista W como un vicio a la moda. Sin embargo, lo que en la cultura y música pop es un simple estilo de vida, en el rap es un modo de sobrevivir. Lo que se entiende al leer y escuchar las letras de Hell Hath No Fury. Destacan las experiencias en la calle, la distribución del estupefaciente, el mini relato épico por ser considerado un vendedor experimentado, y de ser posible el mejor en el ramo.

Clipse nos acerca además con el lenguaje oficial del cocaine rap. El argot de los dealers. Al sinfín de sinónimos y eufemismos utilizados para referirse a la cocaína o a las actividades que la rodean. Snow (nieve) es la palabra que la designa. Keys (llaves) son los kilos del químico.

Los hermanos Thornton son los cronistas de las vidas que subsisten con una actividad castigada y perseguida en el mundo entero.

“Long as I’m nice with the flame and the flask, I don’t mind keeping you up on the must-haves. Peep-toe pumps, Gucci slouch bag—now tell me, is that dirty money really that bad?”

Dick in a box

Justin Timberlake y Andy Samberg en SNL:

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Recomendación de SPIN

Los Abandoned "VAN NUYS (ES VERY NICE)" Bilingual, femme-fronted bubblegum-punk combo buzzes like lo-fi Blondie about the ups and downs of L.A. -- strip-mall fires, porno stars, car theft, etc.

¿New York Times versión tabloide?

As The New York Times slowly works its way toward a narrower broadsheet in 2008, the paper has another new format in development: a tabloid for the younger generation.

The noodling about the tabloid, according to a source familiar with the project, has been taking place in a Times committee that first convened this past April to generate ideas about marketing and boosting circulation.

But the proposed Times tabloid would not go head to head with amNewYork or Metro on the stairways to the No. 1 train. The idea is for it to be more like a hard-copy relative of UrbanEye than an easy-read news digest. It would be a weekly, heavy on event listings—like The Village Voice, or the New York Press, or Time Out New York or New York magazine or the front end of The New Yorker, for that matter.

Fuera de la jugada

Estaba viendo la lista de los 40 mejores álbumes de 2006, según la revista Spin. Me sentí decepcionado por contar con pocos de ellos, es decir que estuve fuera de la jugada. Los únicos que tengo de la lista son:

The Rapture, Pieces of the People We Love (Lugar 33)

Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Show Your Bones (31)

Thom Yorke, The Eraser (28)

The Raconteurs, Broken Boy Soldiers (19)

Editors, The Back Room (16)

Arctic Monkeys, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not (3)

A mis discos yo los ordenaría así en un humilde Top6:

1 People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not



2 Broken Boy Soldiers



3 Pieces of the People We Love



4 The Back Room




5 Show Your Bones



6 The Eraser

El peligro de informar desde Irak

Al leer la frase un año pésimo pienso en el título de una novela de John Fante. En el joven protagonista Dominic y sus sueños por ser un pitcher profesional de béisbol. Sin embargo, esas tres palabras también sirven para ilustrar la terrible situación de la prensa que cubre el conflicto en Irak. Sólo basta saber que 32 reporteros han muerto en ese país en lo que va de 2006. La cifra es escalofriante por sí sola y coloca a este año en un triste pedestal: es la peor registrada hasta ahora por el Comité para Proteger Periodistas, un grupo que monitorea el trato hacia los informadores.

From The Basement

Ayer se lanzó oficialmente From The Basement. La pregunta obvia es qué es. Las respuestas aquí son muchas: un innovador programa grabado en Londres en alta definición; es un serial musical con actuaciones de los músicos con mayor influencia y alcance en el mundo; una apuesta visual donde los importantes son los invitados, son ellos quienes se apoderan del escenario, de ahí que no haya conductor y tampoco audiencia en vivo; es una opción televisiva que no se sujeta a ninguna empresa dedicada a los medios de comunicación y es sobre todo un escaparate único, un manjar de canciones, acordes y estilos.
La primera entrega es invitadora a más no poder. Se puede ver y escuchar a Thom Yorke en el piano y a The White Stripes brindando lo que más saben hacer.

Carol Oates, Auster, Atwood, McEwan, Cunningham, Eugenides, Tan y Lamb, juntos

El Key West Literary Seminar se ha impuesto a una serie de calamidades para sobrevivir, incluyendo el explosivo crecimiento de Fort Lauderdale que más no podría contraponerse al sitio que originalmente conocieron Ernest Hemingway, Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop, Tennessee Williams y Thomas McGuane.

"Any place in America where people want to live has been, in a sense, ruined by its own success," says Miles Freiden, executive director of the seminar for the past 12 years. "It brings in money and prices out young people and artists. They can't afford to live here anymore."... As Frieden says, "The seminar lives in the realm of myth. For four days we all experience the mythology of Key West as we wish it could be." As a result, he adds, the problems associated with growth haven't changed the seminar at all.

A pesar de ello, los boletos para el seminario de 2007 se acabaron desde enero de 2006 y eso que ni siquiera se sabía quienes lo darían. Aquellos que se hicieron de las entradas del seminario "Wondrous Strange: Mystery, Intrigue and Psychological Drama" no tendrán de que arrepentirse:

Set for Jan. 11-17, the seminar features such noted authors as Joyce Carol Oates, Paul Auster, Margaret Atwood, Ian McEwan, Michael Cunningham, Jeffrey Eugenides, Amy Tan and Wally Lamb.

Por eso se recomienda que lo mejor es solicitar lo más pronto posible las entradas para el seminario de 2008 que llevará como nombre "New Voices: Where Have We Been? Where Are We Going?. Y eso de solicitar no significa nada porque los que llegan a entrar tienen que ser agraciados en una especie de lotería.

Tomado de la columna del 17 de diciembre de Chauncey Mabe en el Sun Sentinel: "The key to success"

Complicaciones navideñas

Momix

Cuando vi por primera vez la foto que pego aquí fue en blanco y negro. Entonces me pareció una imagen interesante y cautivadora, pero al verla a colores me impresioné aún más, ya que incluso parece una animación:



Sunflower Moon : Members of US Moses Pendleton's dance company Momix perform during a rehearsal for 'Sunflower Moon' in Madrid. (AFP/Pierre-Philippe Marcou)

¿La conjura de los necios al cine?

Tener un Ignatius Reilly de carne y hueso ha sido un largo dolor de cabeza para un hombre y uno de los grandes estudios de Hollywood como lo narra una pieza de Slate:

According to some sources, a film version of Dunces is slated for release in 2007, with a meticulously faithful script by Kramer and Steven Soderbergh. To direct, Kramer has attached David Gordon Green, who, though relatively unknown, has a Southern Gothic style that matches the tone of the book. The all-star cast includes Lily Tomlin, Drew Barrymore, Mos Def, Olympia Dukakis, and Will Ferrell in a fat suit, as the philosophical and portly Ignatius J. Reilly. There's just one problem: Not a scene has been captured on film yet.

Murió el creador de Linterna Verde

Martin Nodell, the creator of Green Lantern, the comic book superhero who uses his magical ring to help him fight crime, has died. He was 91.
Nodell died at a nursing home in Muskego, Wisconsin, on Saturday of natural causes, his son Spencer Nodell told The Associated Press on Tuesday. He previously lived in West Palm Beach.

Los No-Creyentes

Los peregrinos caminaban o se desplazaban en bicicleta para llegar a su cita con la Virgen de Guadalupe y cantarle las mañanitas. Muchos de ellos llevaban imágenes suyas sobre la espalda y avanzaban sin importarles el peso. Algunos automóviles particulares y patrullas de la policía los escoltaban y sólo paraban para comprarse tamales, tacos y atole a precios módicos que ofrecían algunos comerciantes improvisados que no desaprovechaban la oportunidad de ganar unos pesos más.

Al llegar a casa tomé una revista “Wired” de un librero y tras pasar algunas páginas, me decidí a leer The Church of the Non-Belivers de Gary Wolf y prácticamente sin darme cuenta avanzaba en la lectura de un artículo aparentemente muy impropio para un 12 de diciembre.

El trabajo habla de una corriente de filósofos, académicos, sociólogos y hasta personas del entretenimiento que conforman una cruzada de ateos que se opone no sólo a los religiones, sino a los no-creyentes que se oponen a tomar una actitud radical ante los creyentes. Aseguran que las religiones, no algún desastre natural, acabarán con la humanidad a través de guerras santas si no se les pone el alto.

Aseguran además que ser ateo en Estados Unidos es como ser gay, porque no es bien visto que alguien afirme no creer en Dios. Señalan que hay muchos no-creyentes que no se animan a salir del clóset para no perder posiciones sociales y mucho menos si se trata de algún personaje que competirá por un puesto de elección popular.

Los no creyentes más notables son el biólogo Richard Dawkins, el neurólogo Sam Harris, el experto en computación Glenn Slade; el rockero Greg Graffin, el filósofo Daniel Dennet, el activista Warren Allen Smith, el locutor Howard Stern, los creadores de South Park y los ilusionistas Penn y Teller.

Tienen argumentos muy fuertes, pero su lucha parece perdida, además de que lucen como nuevos fundamentalistas que se oponen a las libertades de quienes profesan una religión. Sin duda debatir sus ideas debe ser intenso, pero tendrían el camino cerrado, por ejemplo, con los peregrinos que llegaron ayer y hoy a La Villa.

Loretta

Ella es Loretta Sanchez. Es Congresista. Tiene un lugar en la Cámara de Representantes por el Distrito 47 de California. Hace diez años comenzó su carrera política y ya cumplió su quinto término en la Cámara Baja estadounidense. De acuerdo con su sitio web oficial hay dos cosas que la distinguen de entre sus compañeros: accesibilidad y el sentido de colaboración.

En época navideña como millones de personas, Loretta gusta de enviar tarjetas a sus amigos y seres queridos. Una foto para compartir. Ustedes juzguen.

Telenovela al estilo Bret Easton Ellis*

In a step in the right direction to keep from getting too far behind its competition, Showtime has decided to work with controversial novelist Bret Easton Ellis on a soap opera, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Dubbed "The Canyon", Ellis will be working with the cable network to produce something that (sadly) sounds more like "Friday the 13th" than "Twin Peaks".

The six main characters -- including an art gallery owner, lawyer, event planner and a closeted bartender -- deal with career and relationship issues. They encounter violent situations and anxieties that are briefly manifested as monsters and other apparitions that may or may not be real.
Despite the surreal touches, Ellis says he doesn't want the series to venture intoDavid Lynch territory. "There are no midgets walking backwards," he said, laughing. "We want something much more naturalistic -- a very realistic soap."
Ellis said he developed the idea during one of his "dark periods" living in a Los Angeles hotel while looking for a home. "I had a feeling that the world was coming to an end, which I still think it is, and was making fear-based decisions, which were getting me into worse situations. I wanted to write a soap based on fear and anxiety in L.A." - Hollywood Reporter

Strange that Ellis would be against walking (and talking) backwards midgets. Didn't everyone walk backwards a few times, very nicely, in the Rules of Attraction?
Hopefully Mr.Ellis will take advantage of the freedom of subscription cable and lets himself go, the same way he lets himself goes in his over-the-top stories.

*Tomado de LAist

Chabon*



-“El Escapista” -repitió Joe. A sus oídos extranjeros sonaba magnífico: sonaba a alguien de confianza, útil y fuerte-. Es un artista de la fuga disfrazado. Que combate al crimen.
-No solamente lo combate. Libera al mundo. Libera a la gente, ¿lo entiendes? Sale por las noches. Vigila oculto en las sombras. Guiado solamente por la luz de… La luz de…
-Su llave de Oro.
-¡Genial!
-Ya veo –dijo Joe. El disfraz tenía que ser oscuro, azul oscuro del color de la medianoche, simple, funcional, adornado únicamente con el emblema de una llave maestra en el pecho. Joe fue a una de las mesas de dibujo y se subió al taburete. Cogió un lápiz y una hoja de papel y empezó a hacer un boceto rápido, cerrando su párpado interior y proyectando sobre él, por decirlo de algún modo, la imagen de un ágil acróbata recién aparecido en su mente, un hombre en el acto de posarse en el suelo, como un gimnasta descendiendo de sus anillas, con su talón derecho a punto de tocar el suelo, la pierna izquierda levantada y flexionada a la altura de la rodilla, los brazos en alto, las manos extendidas, intentando captar los movimientos físicos de un hombre, el toma y daca de los grupos de músculos y tendones, forjar como nunca lo había hecho un artista del cómic, los fundamentos anatómicos de la gracia y el estilo.
-Uau –dijo Sammy-. Uua, Joe. Es bueno. Es estupendo.
- Ha venido a liberar al mundo.
- Exactamente.








*Michael Chabon, Las asombrosas aventuras de Kavalier y Clay, Editorial Mondadori, Barcelona, España, 2002, 1ª, edición, Traducción de Javier Calvo. p. 128.