Seven Eccles

2006-08-14T09:03:00.000-07:00

2006-01-11T08:32:00.000-08:00

Interesting developments from the Stranger Than Fiction department. It turns out James Frey's teeth-grinding best-selling memoir "A Million Little Pieces" might be being relocated to the fiction department of your nearest Waterstone's. And his publisher doesn't care. This comes on the heels of the debunking of the JT LeRoy myth.
A friend of mine in college gave me a supscription to Index for X-mas once. I remember reading about JT with particular bafflement, borne out of the realization of what it would take to make it as a writer in the 2k's---a sordid backstory. I've always unconsciously boycotted his writing, and I feel a minor sense of validation that JT is more or less somebody named Laura Albert.
James Wolcott says it better than I could:
"Fashion yourself as "a survivor," and voyeuristic readers will feel the excitement of a dangerous voyage with so many valuable lessons to be learned along the way."

2006-01-10T07:50:00.000-08:00

Bombaccino

2005-12-15T05:07:00.000-08:00

get your RMX's

2005-12-13T10:55:00.000-08:00

Hate it or luv it?

2005-12-13T10:27:00.000-08:00

At the height of the famine in 1847 the body of an unnamed boy, taken for lifeless, was placed in a coffin in the Town Square and conveyed for burial to the Abbey Cemetry. As he was lowered into the pit, the youth regained consciousness and walked unaided from the grave.

Sciencedaily.com

2005-12-12T09:02:00.000-08:00

Save Tookie
A couple MAJ bloggers have posted about the impending execution of Tookie Williams in California. His fate is in Arnold's hands now, it seems. For some context, Amy Goodman has background and interviews over on the vital Democracy Now! site. Check out Tookie's own site for first-hand accounts of what Tookie's actually done for this world.

2005-12-12T06:45:00.000-08:00

Slackers might have caught Bobby Deniro's Bronx Tale on the box last night. I didn't, but my college roommate way back used to swear by it. (The kid in it is a Yankee fan and I think that put me off the entire vehicle.) But I write about other matters---Bronx Tale was the film The General was returning to the video shop the day he got done, says to Michael Dwyer on the radio yesterday. Then, it turns out, the other night, the kid, now 29, played by Lillo Brancato, breaks into a Bronx apartment and shoots an undercover cop. Brancato himself is in critical condition and has second-degree murder charges pending if he pulls through. A Bronx tale, INDEED!

2005-12-12T06:41:00.000-08:00

RIP, homey

2005-12-10T13:20:00.000-08:00

Romantic Ireland's dead and gone.

While I'm loathe to admit being anywhere near the vacinity of "The Late Late Show" on a Friday night, I'd been looking for a clever way to introduce a "Late Late Sex Toy Show" all week, and wouldn't you know, Pat did all the dirty work for me. Cue the Vets on Call, up from Tulla, gifting PK with plastic gloves that run an arm's length and a metal cow castrator, looking like a nutcracker (pun intended) in the land of the giants. "Mine wouldn't fit in there," he says. Go on, PK!

2005-12-07T08:50:00.000-08:00

I went looking for a laugh on this miserable day and stumbled onto this cranky rant about American sports culture in the Guardian. It's a very un-Guardian sports piece, nothing measured or clever about it. It reads more like a dispatch from an desperate Englishman stuck in Philly, the fattest city in America. The writer, Steve Wells, picks the ugly Eagles ('Iggles' in Phillyspeak)---Dallas Cowboys rivalry to shine on a light on the perceptions the American sportsfan has of itself and its Other, portrayed time and time again as a bulging bald Englishman with a spiderweb tattooed to his skull and 3 liters of Strongbow in his hand.

Halfway down, Wells concedes "OK, so US sports has no equivalent of the Lazio Ultras or the ICF." You just placed yourself in checkmate, holmes! Say what you will Iggles fans---they even booed Santa Claus---the complete lack of a racist dimension in American sportstands gives them moral authority over football fans. Which is not to say all football fans are racist. But LBJ wouldn't have to do this in Charlotte or Atlanta, in the heart of Dixie. American sports fans are generally as idiotic as their European brethren, but you don't have to worry about a Klan rally breaking out during the halftime festivities.

Much of Wells ire seems to be aroused by the peristence of the 'Hooligan' as persistent signifier of Englishness in American culture. As if Hillsborough happened last season. Doesn't anyone in America read lad lit? Seen Fever Pitch as a football film? Football is for the middle classes. Thank Rupes.

2005-12-06T09:38:00.000-08:00

These are the kind of the things that make life amazing. George Clinton grew up five miles down the road from me in Plainfield, where he was a barber and sang doo-wop with the Parliaments. What happened to everybody during the Sixties? Most white people fled the place, like they did in Roselle, Linden, and Elizabeth. George went west and discovered funk along the way. Props.

2005-12-06T07:02:00.000-08:00

The Nature of the Beast
It is the bizarro nature of the interhole that during some days of heavy blogging, I feel more rooted in the cultural ongoings of the 'Burg, or like I'm back hanging with Beantown homies---people I've never actually met before. Dublinlife on the poorbox is a severe cultural strain. By my own craic research, gigs in Ireland are the most expensive in Europe. Only John Kelly has our back---I'd watch him spinning discs on TV. It would beat the pants off this.

2005-12-05T09:52:00.002-08:00

Save da Hoodie
American DJ: Wait. It's getting banned?
Sov: It's a real fring

Lady Sov's dropping lines in JC like she's on Rinse. Work the homepage. It's the first I've actually heard Sov; the hype is on its way. Lame to hear her propping NYC---you were rocking Jersey, girl.

2005-12-05T09:47:00.000-08:00

According to Times' magazine, it is a Hot thing to rearrange your paintings. I could have saved my breath

2005-12-04T11:07:00.000-08:00

Some of the time, J-school feels like an extended edition of 'Everything You Never Wanted to Know About a Life in the Media, But Were Afraid to Ask.'
In 3 months, though, I've begin to question my own attachment to the Irish Times , and the nation's at large. It makes me feel like a 13 year old, waking up to the fact that the patriarchs of my world-cops, priests, politicians, and my own father i guess- were relative bullshitters.
It's amazing to go to a shop on a Sunday and see the sheer amount of papers on the market. It certainly seems beyond its saturation point. And for everything being sold in the Sunday rags--DVD's, posters, cheap pornagraphic thrills-- what does the Times give us? What has it ever given us? It is one of the most expensive papers of earth and its webpage demands a subscription fee. Where is the backlash? Imagine a paper or any business opening up today with their business model.
How did I become so indocrinated in IrishTimesthink? I guess it was the small things-the type face, the sheer amount of words on a page, the broadness of a sheet. Aesthetically, it oozed tradition and class, and this is sacred for journophiles. As I was settling in Ireland, I needed a paper of record. The Independent and Examiner are/were (generally) crappy papers (which I would gladly write for)
I wonder how much money I've spent on the Times. My girlfriend labelled it as a vice of mine. Disgusting. Roughly you can read 2 Guardian's for every Times. Think of it as a life lived. One life lived with the Times, two with the Guardian.
What do you get with the Times. Colorless local reporting. Opague political coverage; a lot of press releases respun. Its subediting can be woeful for a paper that takes itself so seriously. Its Washington correspondances are always yesterday's news. Its arts coverage doesn't democratically reflect the paper's readership or the kinds of art being made or passing through this country. (I'm not including The Ticket, whichs runs outside the body of the Times and I consider a second cousin of the broadsheet)
What the Times has going for it are two or three writers always worth reading, its Saturday supplement, one of the best sports sections I've ever come across, and the weather page which has Bernard McWilliams and the Simplex crossword, which I look forward to doing every single day. Still, there is that feeling of heartbeat of the informed nation running through its pages. And that contact is a priveleged thing at one euro fifty. The dream died for me the October bank holiday, when I could barely turn the pages of the Times on a cramped train home to Galway without inadvertantenly punching the girl beside me. The Guardian was sitting there on the table laughing at me.

2005-12-02T10:22:00.000-08:00

The root cause of Irish alcoholism.

2005-12-01T10:59:00.000-08:00

Kill yr idols
A reporter at a paper I used to work has a eulogy for the journalist formerly known Bob Woodward. In saying goodbye, he can't help but wonder where the new Bob Woodward's are, or where they will come from.
The terrible implosion of the institution of journalism over the past three years has been, from someone in my generation's vantage point, nearly entertaining---the stakes are too high for it to be a complete laugh. But growing up in the shadow of baby-boomers in America, and all their 'passion' and all of their 'idealism', I get a craven sense of satisfaction in watching their heroes defeated. The sacred houses of American journalism---especially the times---have been felled. They made their bed, and they're lying in it.
The thing is the future has already began--it's working from the ground up. Check out what Al is doing in Mexico. He's got people on the ground. He's talking REAL journalism. The stakes have changed---you just gotta keep your ear to the ground.

2005-11-30T08:24:00.000-08:00

Bored in Blog Jersey? Chauncey is back from the void and ready for the 2k5-6 NBA season. Football/rugby bloggers can't touch this.
Rolling Stones in Phoenix Park? Dinosaurs at the Dublin Zoo! Keep Thunderlips at least 500 feet from Mary& Aras an Uachtarain, ,please!

2005-11-30T06:02:00.000-08:00

Not only is Salam Pax the OG of Baghdad bloggers, he's posting Diplo rmx's, even though he's not totally down with hip-hop.
If you haven't learned by now, the Western press is a bit slow to the story in Iraq. Understandable, being a target on both sides. But there's a corp of Iraqi's blogging in English that tend to have the real story. Here's an Iraqi metablog keeping the overview. There's an election a few weeks, and while some are preparing a purple revolution, bloggers will know the score

2005-11-30T05:49:00.000-08:00

When I saw the ads, I had a momentary convulsion, hoping Sony was going to bet its business model on cassette. Instead, we get another wack MP3 player. Tapes are by far my favorite sound genre, certainly the most durable for these destructive hands. Japanese homies are keeping it real on the sound art tip.

2005-11-23T08:51:00.000-08:00

Yes, yes y'all

Free music for all my peeps.
http://gabba.cc/
http://www.fluxblog.org/
http://soul-sides.com/
http://monkeysars.net/
http://www.moistworks.com/

Barely scratching the surface here, peeps! Tofuhut, even in absentia,
remains top dog

2005-11-23T08:38:00.000-08:00

Homies who enjoyed The Constant G are directed to this article to John LeC back in '01. (Props to Rupture for the steal! Enjoy 24 hours of Beethoven's 9th while you visit)

2005-11-23T08:27:00.000-08:00

When the blogging gets rough, the rough get blogging. If you're looking for an oracle to decode the political mess in America, firedoglake consistently rewards with both truth and speculation.

2005-11-23T04:14:00.000-08:00

Casualty of war

2005-11-23T03:49:00.000-08:00

Killing the messenger

2005-11-21T07:49:00.000-08:00

Googling after Indecision writer's lit mag n + 1 lead back to Konono somehow. A mind of its own.

2005-11-17T05:13:00.000-08:00

All eyes are on Tunisia---Yesterday's Independent (UK) ran a front page report on what's at stake there this weekend. Anyone who imagines the web as the machinations of otherwordly magic should realize that people are queueing up to regulate and harness it. Buzzmachine has a list of American incidences of blogger prosecution/persecution. It will be interesting in ten or fifteen if this era of web journalism is seen a blip or turning point in mass media. Blow it all up, I say.

2005-11-16T09:57:00.000-08:00

A better bet than England to win the World Cup

2005-11-16T08:34:00.000-08:00

I was veering towards sleep last night when Cian played something from the Ali Farke Toure and Toumani Diabate album. It's the fourth or fifth time I've heard him play it---always the same song. It's about as beautiful as a piece of music can be. Blogging today turned me onto Konono #1 (their soundsystem pictured left) who are Congolese but live in Kinshasa. If Ali Farke Toure is like four hours in an opium den, Konono #1 is like drinking blood. BT played a song of theirs on his show yesterday. It gave me flashbacks of a twenty-second snippet on a mixtape I have somewhere of that same crazy instrument---named the likembe (Konono line out with three of them)---found between the cracks on the lefthand side of New York radio dial. It amazing how far things travel to find us, and how they stick with us when they do.

2005-11-15T09:13:00.000-08:00

The Chinese dishwashers at work seemed completely shocked to encounter an American undertaking the same underpaid slog. They had a real reverence for American culture, based on whatever strangely-translated, triple-filtered MTV programmes found their way into their living rooms. Maybe TRL will save us from the nuclear winter Nostradamus or the Dark Lord have penciled in for 2012.

Or maybe we can count on the Big Man. One of the dishwashers, Zang, was telling me how before left China, he used to know every NBA player. I've been feeling small doses of NBA nostalgia the last week myself. The NBA is another slice of Americana that is impossible to enjoy out of context. The Newark Star-Ledger's Dave D's Nets Blast is what a good blog should be---worth reading, even when you're indifferent or spiteful towards the source material. There are few stranger journalistic assignments in the States than the NBA beat reporter---the many nights in Cleveland, Atlanta, Charlotte, etc. with blinging, superrich twenty-one year olds.

(Bob Vanden's happy---Katrina's given him some round ball in OKC)

Hova's moving the Nets to Brook-Nam, so maybe he'll have Jeezy on the beat. Everyone seems to be publishing Jay-Z puff pieces these days. Jigga's made the All-American evolution from crack dealer to CEO in less than ten years. Inspiration for us dishwashers and sous chefs.

2005-11-15T08:35:00.000-08:00

Not a good time to be a journalist travelling through Tunisia. Not a good time to be in Tunisia at all. Lara Marlowe had the story in today's Irish Times of Liberation journalist Christophe Boltanski's stabbing in Tunis on Saturday and Reporters Without Borders is reporting a Belgian news crew were attacked by plain-clothes police yesterday. The crackdown precedes the ironically-titled World Summit on the Information Society taking place in Tunis this weekend---you can't even do online Soduko in Tunisia.

2005-11-15T06:51:00.000-08:00

Brian Turner, dj at the world's second best radio station is going to have Andy from the Ex on his show today, which broadcasts out at 3 o'clock Jersey City Time, 8 Ireland time, and will be available to listen to online anytime subsequently. The Ex have been keeping it realer longer than anyone else in the game. They've bringing a lot of dope music back from Africa of late. Check it out here.

2005-11-14T10:12:00.000-08:00

Jeff Jarvis gets it right in today's Guardian. Three bloggers in France were arrested last weeks for posting "Unite, Ile-de-France, and burn the cops. Go to the nearest police station and burn it". Keep speech free. Can they do the same in Ireland? No, not yet.

Then again, any reference to Newark excites me.

Scroll Buzz Machine, among other oddities, has a relevant link to a WSJ article about 'art-blogging'. (psst---there are plenty of less pretentious ways of describing your culture-themed blog, while a few blogs skew on the side of artful.) At the day's end, all culture is local. "Art-blogging" ---if it ever arrives here---might actually be the shake up Irish media needs. It seems like there is a HUGE cultural demographic (with incredible spending power) being completely ignored by the Irish media. People looking for more than the same seven songs on shuffle from their radio; well-travelled people looking to be challenged, but not condescended to, by film, theatre, etc. Explain this to me.

I, for one, find the amount of coverage devoted to the arts in mainstream Irish media atrocious---as well as completely incongruous with both the amount of culture available in this country and the amount of people consuming it.

There is actually culture happening outside of Dublin.

Is this pertinent to the discussion? Is it a stylistic gulf or a cultural one that separates UK and American music criticism? UK/Irish music critics have a clue what to make of American criticism. How can you utter love for Deerhoof and Kanye in the same breath? But then again, people are still roving Washington Square for the future. You can't even find a dimebag in Washington Square anymore. If Bobby Z were to be reincarnated, he'd be living in Bed-Sty sharing a futon singing Christopher Wallace's Bullethole Blues, or more likely, back in Duluth, blogging in his basement

2005-11-13T09:47:00.000-08:00

I forgot to mention...

This is a blog will function as a resevoir of vegetarian recipes, allston nostalgia and rap lyrics, with occasional correspondces from Dublin's surreal sides. Any venomous diatribes against the Irish media should not be taken personally.
It's like this where I come from.

2005-11-08T07:07:00.000-08:00

Today is grey.