Michael profile picture

Michael

for the love of ivy

About Me

Writer, academic, CD reviewer (Skyscraper), book reviewer, music fan. Occassional guitar player and drummer. U.S. post-World War II literature and culture is my focus area. I am working on a dissertation on the authors James Leo Herlihy, James Purdy, and Rudolph Wurlitzer. I am also interested in issues of gender and sexuality, and Native American literature.

My Interests

my better half, odd resonances, art, American literature and culture, London, Colorado, vegetarianism, writing, theory, gender, delay pedals, blah blahartists: Kandinsky, Egon Shiele, Odilon Redon, Matisse, Warhol, Rauschenberg, Peter Blake, Rosenquist, Vasarely, Renoir, Cezanne, Mati Klarwein, Wien Actionissmus Movement

I'd like to meet:

People with similar interests. Fans of Purdy, Herlihy, and Wurlitzer. Shoegaze fans, especially in Oklahoma.

Music:

Chimp Rock, Mahogany, Jim Pepper, Lab Partners, Bright Channel, The Smiths, A.R. Kane, Pearls Before Swine/Tom Rapp, Serena-Maneesh, The Minders, Snowglobe, Swirlies, Sun Ra, Television Personalities, Joy Division, Pale Saints, Galaxie 500, Kranky Records, Elephant Stone Records, Factory Records, Clairecords, 4AD Records, Rainbow Quartz records, Robert Wyatt, Aloha, Amusement Parks on Fire, Moose, Kraftwerk, King Tubby, Durutti Column, Windy and Carl, My Bloody Valentine, Talk Talk, Sing-Sing, Spacemen 3, Spiritualized, Flying Saucer Attack, Adventures in Stereo, Stereolab, Kevin Ayres, All Natural Lemon & Lime Flavors, Fine China, Lush, Kitchens of Distinction, Felt, Ester Drang, OMD, Eno, Guided by Voices, Lotus Crown, Scritti Politti, Cocteau Twins, Byrds, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Trash Can Sinatras, Morrissey, Ride, Can, Comsat Angels, Jazz Butcher, Mogwai, Rollerskate Skinny, Fuxa, Deerhoof, Mahogany, Doldrums, The Kinks, The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Zombies, Beacon Street Union, Robin Guthrie, Mojave 3, Slipstream, Spectrum, Sonic Boom, E.A.R., Cody, AMP, Slowdive, The Telescopes, Robert Pollard, Brian Wilson, Shallow, Boredoms, Mercury Rev, Idaho.Eric Dolphy, Mingus, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, John and Alice Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Elvin Jones, Joe Henderson, Art Blakey, Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Yusef Lateef, Andrew Hill, Cecil Taylor, Sam Rivers, of course Miles.

Movies:

9/11 Revisited v.2


..
September 11th Revisited v.2 is a follow up to perhaps the most riveting film ever made about the destruction of the World Trade Center. This is a powerful documentary which features eyewitness accounts and archived news footage that was shot on September 11, 2001 but never replayed on television. Featuring interviews with eyewitnesses & firefighters, along with expert analysis by Professor Steven E. Jones, Professor David Ray Griffin, MIT Engineer Jeffrey King, and Professor James H. Fetzer.

Herbert's Hippopotamus: Marcuse and Revolution in Paradise


..
This documentary examines the turbulent life in California of political philosopher Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979), author of One-Dimensional Man, Reason and Revolution and Eros and Civilization, among other books, professor of philosophy at the University of California San Diego, and a visionary and influential force for the student movement worldwide during the Sixties and Seventies. Blending archival footage, interviews, re- created scenes and voice-over narration, the video profiles not only the life of Marcuse but also the history of student protest and social activism. The video features interviews with Marcuse's student Angela Davis, former UCSD Chancellor William McGill, colleagues Fredric Jameson and Reinhard Lettau, and rare footage of Marcuse and former California Governor Ronald Reagan. Directed by Paul Alexander Juutilainen DIE, MOMMIE, DIE! (totally hilarious and brilliant), Art School Confidential, The Squid and the Whale, Kicking and Screaming, Glenn Tillbrook: One for the Road, An Inconvenient Truth, Capote, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Outfoxed. Of All Time: Rear Window, Vertigo, Weekend (Godard), Blue Velvet, Harold & Maude, Midnight Cowboy, Two-Lane Blacktop, Fire Walk with Me, Repo Man, Blow-Up, The Big Sleep, Head, The Tenant, The Servant, Rosemary's Baby, Repulsion, Touch of Evil, Drugstore Cowboy, Zabriskie Point, Chinatown, All Beatles movies, Rebel Without a Cause, Withnail and I, Henry FoolJohn Waters, Stan Brakhage, Kenneth Anger, John-Luc Godard, Polanski, Claude Chabrol, Robert Frank, David Lynch, Ang Lee.

Television:

Twin Peaks, Simpsons, Freaks and Geeks, X-Files, Jeopardy, Max Headroom, Patty Duke Show, Laff-a-lympics, American Experience, Veronica Mars

Books:

In a Shallow Grave, Eustace Chisholm and the Works, I am Elijah Thrush, and many others by JAMES PURDY, the essay "I Have a Taste for the Secret" by Jacques Derrida, Sketches of a Secret War by Timothy Snyder, The Lesser Blessed by Richard Van Camp, Drowning in Fire and Red on Red by Craig Womack, Frederick Barthelme, Wild Sheep Chase by Murakami, All Fall Down, Midnight Cowboy, and The Sleep of Baby Filbertson by James Leo Herlihy, Nog, Two-Lane Blacktop, and Slow Fade by Rudolph Wurlitzer, Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow, and Slow Learner by Thomas Pynchon, Mumbo Jumbo and Flight to Canada by Ishmael Reed, Narrative Prosthesis by Sharon Snyder and David Mitchell, Sundown by John Joseph Mathews, Winter in the Blood by James Welch, Kurt Vonnegut, Donald Barthelme, Interior Landscapes and others by Gerald Vizenor, Philip Roth, Joan Didion, Truman Capote, Vladimir Nabokov, Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko, Richard Farina, William Faulkner, Moby Dick and Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville, A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood, Michael Moon, Michel Foucault, Kicking Tomorrow, Wising Up the Marks: The Amodern William S. Burroughs by Timothy Murphy, W.S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Dharma Bums, Big Sur, and Visions of Gerard by Jack Kerouac, The Last of the Ofos by Geary Hobson, Like a Hurricane by Robert Warrior and Paul Chiaat, The Armies of the Night by Norman Mailer, Witold Gombrowicz, Don DeLillo, Kafka, Richard Brautigan, William J. Craddock, Nathanael West, Flannery O'Connor, House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday, Joe Orton, Aldous Huxley, Abbie Hoffman, Bob Kaufman, Robert Coover, e e cummings, Philip K. Dick, Ballard, A Pipe for February by Charles Red Corn, Claude McKay: "Banjo", DeQuincey: "Confessions of an English Opium Eater," Sterne: "Tristram Shandy," music writing: Really the Blues by Mezz Mezzrow, Beneath the Underdog by Charles Mingus, Rip it Up and Start Again and Blissed Out by Simon Reynolds, Ralph Meltzer, Lester Bangs. James Kirkwood, Evan Rhodes, Evan H. Rhodes, Walter Starcke, John Van Druten

My Blog

"gay sweaters"

he: God, Jenna Bush has lost her looks already.  Ugh, she really looks like her Dad. she: you can see her mom too, but, yeah, gross, look at that trademark smirk. he: yeah, she looks a chimp.&nbs...
Posted by Michael on Sat, 01 Sep 2007 11:15:00 PST

JAMES LEO HERLIHY "Love and the Buffalo"

This 1960s short story by James Leo Herlihy (author of Midnight Cowboy and All Fall Down) is available online.  It is a harrowing statement on the postwar period.  It was published in h...
Posted by Michael on Fri, 17 Aug 2007 03:19:00 PST

Lab Partners radical new EP

The Lab Partners' new CD EP "Keep Quiet" is five tracks of awesomeness.  Dreamy, punchy, catchy, atmospheric, delicious.  Check them out.  A brilliant intro to this underexposed b...
Posted by Michael on Wed, 27 Jun 2007 02:56:00 PST

Daughter

For those who haven't heard, our sweet Ivy Katherine was born at 9:55 pm on Friday, March 16, 7 lbs 8 oz.  She is healthy and beautiful.  L. is doing well.  For those who are inte...
Posted by Michael on Sun, 08 Apr 2007 02:17:00 PST

albums that have meant a lot

A totally subjective list, not referring to musical quality. Some albums that do mean, or have meant a lot to me, considering my whole lifetime (barring the last five years or so), not repeating any b...
Posted by Michael on Mon, 01 Jan 1900 12:00:00 PST

Superlative Shoegaze / Dreampop list

My Shoegaze List.  Superlative Shoegazing, Shoegazer, Dreampop, Neo-Spacerock, Nugaze, Post-Gaze.  Note: There is a great deal of diverse sounds from the bands on this list, but a...
Posted by Michael on Sun, 11 Feb 2007 04:09:00 PST

Beck is a scientologist

Beck is a scientologist.  What to make of all this?  Earlier I had thought it maybe an ironic joke encouraged by the sometimes impish Beck Hansen.  But no.  Beck is a scientologis...
Posted by Michael on Wed, 10 Jan 2007 08:45:00 PST

Love 'n' Arthur Lee

Is it not strange how soon Arthur Lee died after Syd Barrett?  Both were called "acid casualties", but anyone who saw the video of Love "Forever Changes" live, or one of Love's later good shows, ...
Posted by Michael on Wed, 16 Aug 2006 06:47:00 PST

Schoolyard kiddie culture

I was thinking about songs and jokes I used to repeat in elementary school in Ohio.  I didn't really understand many of them at the time but they seemed funny all the same.  I wonder if you ...
Posted by Michael on Thu, 13 Jul 2006 07:09:00 PST

3/4 indie (or more like Indiana?)

You Are 75% Indiehttp://images.blogthings.com/howindieareyouquiz/indie-4 .jpg" height="100" width="100">You're a very indie person, and admit it, you look down a little on people who strive to be norma...
Posted by Michael on Wed, 12 Jul 2006 07:17:00 PST