THE ALPENROSE THURSDAY SERIES IS DECADENT AND DEPRAVED

i took the beaverton-hillsdale highway out to the track, riding fast down the relative straightaway between capital highway and the hills on shattuck. it was warm and muggy, the humidity a rare but sufferable effect of summer's long awaited arrival to portland, and my back was soaked with sweat under my shoulder bag. my outfit was functional enough for city riding, but the chafing at my saddle reminded for the fourth time in a week not to ride anything more than five consecutive miles on the fixed gear without wearing a pair of shorts with a chamois. i'd pounded a pint before heading into the upper altitudes of southwest portland, and i'm hard pressed now to say whether the numbness between my legs was any less tolerable than the smell of the ammonia i was pissing out my face. there was a slim chance that i'd make it in time for the last half of the races.

this was the first time i'd been to the alpenrose velodrome since the opener of last year's cyclocross season, but before that, when i used to more regularly spend time in the southwest hills, i went to the track races nearly every thursday of the summer. the alpenrose thursday series draws both the cream and the dregs of the portland bicycle community, everyone united by a devotion to the trappings of an atavistic cycling culture. alpenrose is one of only twenty or so velodromes left in the united states and it draws the largest crowd of any of them during the alpenrose challenge in july. it was built for the 1967 national championships, which was also the nadir of its glory. it's still in use, but set so far from the center of "new" portland it feels more like a relic of old oregon's libertarian pioneer spirit than a symbol of progress for cyclesport. there are rumors that alpenrose might be demolished and an indoor venue erected at the site of the collosseum across the river from downtown. it was only a coincidence of timing that i was once able to ride the juan de fuca velodrome in victoria, british columbia before it was razed to make room for more soccer fields. i was so excited that i'd been able to get my bicycle over the ten foot fence that i did my laps despite the drizzle and having forgotten to fasten the chin strap of my helmet.

it's lucky that there's no restricted viewing at alpenrose, as i doubt that my appearance would have helped convince the track officials that 'looking good in pants' was a publication worthy of press privileges. plus, i didn't have any mace. at any rate, i positioned myself away from the better heeled spectators seated at the center of the track, probably family of the riders from portland's dynastic elite racing teams. neither of our camps saw fit to exchange any pleasantries, but that didn't stop the poodles from waddling over for a curious sniff.

the fir trees of forest park command the view to the distant north of the track, a refreshing reminder that you don't have to go too far from the center of the city to know you're in the pacific northwest. but as the sun set thursday, the air cooled and with the resulting breeze the musty smell of the stagnant water from the duck pond at the alpenrose dairy crept over the rise at the south edge of the track and onto the stands.

the racers stretched in the grass by the officials' booth or tended their bicycles while making what you can imagine from a distance to be a kind of locker room chat with their competitors. a track bicycle is necessarily simple and streamlined, and the modern ones that racers ride at alpenrose aren't fundamentally different from the ones that were raced at the end of the nineteenth century. a century of materials engineering later and the bicycles are lighter and their bearings run more smoothly, but the basic mechanics are unchanged. the only real and visible difference is the bling. as track racing has gone slowly out of fashion over the years, track racers have become more and more fashionable.

the racers at the thursday series tuned pretty, custom fitted bicycles with impeccably considered color palettes, fast money on two wheels made for nothing else but to turn left over and over around a closed loop for one-sixth of a mile. funny, because the purses that go to the winners at the thursday series don't cover much more than their registration fees. i'd arrived just as the final category three race was starting, which meant getting to watch the elite riders warming up around the smaller loop on the lawn. the bodies at the track are just as fine as the bicycles, and the show on the field rivals any of the races. the thursday series is a spectacle for sure, albeit sparsely attended, and track racers anywhere should be forgiven their skinsuited preening just for letting us watch them fly over the banks of the track within inches of each others' wheels. but whether it's the sport itself or the excitement of exhibitionism, the racers have to love it. the banks at the alpenrose velodrome are some of the steepest in the country, and riders have to maintain a quick minimum speed just to stay upright. their wheels visibly wobble as they jostle for position, and a crash here almost invariably means a shattered collar bone.

i don't know the rules. the category three race seemed short, but i wasn't watching the race carefully enough to guess how many laps they did. most of my beer had burned off during my ride, and i was thinking on whether to regret not having a second one that would have lasted me to the end of the last race, so i don't remember seeing a number on the lap counter at the start line.

the counter was set at 50 for the category one and two race and after a back and forth with the riders lined up on the rail on the outer edge of the track at the start line an official decided that there would be points every ten. i still didn't know how the points worked and i didn't understand most of what the announcer was saying over the old pa system. a few times he shouted something about "letting the rabbit run," and then something on how the riders were sure gonna follow it to the carrot but not exhaust themselves trying to get there first. the rabbit had something to do with why the riders would intermittently ride up the steeper banks at the narrow ends of the track to slow down. apparently getting to 50 the fastest wasn't the only goal of this particular race; but as long as the riders came past where i was sitting i was satisfied. unfortunately, there also seemed to be a sort of sacrifice strategy involved whereby a rider from one team drew out the competition before dropping off the track to let his less spent teammates attack. for points or for the rabbit i wasn't sure, but the one who stopped coming around was the real stud of the group, and it happened after about only 20 laps. slow countdown to zero.

with the elite race over i waited for signs of the madison race -- the real and main event as far as i was concerned -- to take shape out of the group of riders on the lawn. the madison is named for the velodrome at the first madison square garden and dates back to when professional track cyclists were the best paid and most physically tortured athletes in the country. the rest of the world calls it after america, the only place in the world that could have originated a cycling event so spectacular and so stubbornly defiant of the dangers inherent to the sport. madison riders race in teams of two with one rider covering distance toward the finish while his teammate rests at the top of one end of the track. when it's time to switch, the resting rider drops off the bank onto the inner part of the track, and when his teammate overtakes him, he reaches up to have his hand grabbed by the rider in front and is hurtled forward to continue the race.

i realize, full of fear and loathing, that there's hardly a single team warming up (one half of one, actually). no one seems to have registered. i check my phone for the time and see a message from the guy down my street who won't stop texting me to hang out since last weekend.

"that's what you're doing tonight? you can objectify men at my friend's party."

i'm about to scream that there are journalists in the crowd and that someone needs to come through for me on the posted schedule because besides the duck pond smell the weather is permitting. i could have made things up at my computer without coming out to the hills, goddammit.

but i was spared having to poach the spotlight from the looming tragedy when two of the gentle lovers finally decided just to do a demonstration. a short demonstration and not nearly as balletic as with six other riders in competition, but i got what i came for without having to make a scene in front of the track gentry.

a seemingly well intentioned couple approaches me on my way out, and no, i don't know if there will be races tomorrow.

*****

the blogger is riding back into the city, thinking about more beer and whether those riders ever get to let themselves drink any. i'm sure that if i have a couple i can come up with something clever and ballsy to respond to that text.

HOW TO MAKE CULTURE

hip hop knows how to look good in pants, even if 'looking good in pants' doesn't know much about hip hop -- or music criticism, for that matter. (we'd hoped to have someone on that by now, but summer got in the way.) the virtuosity of the sistafist post notwithstanding, this blog's so far insights into the musical world can generally be collected under the like/dislike rubric or a song/album's suitability as accompaniment to some activity (dance, non-dance exercise, non-dance non-exercise movement, non-dance non-exercise non-movement).

so it was fun, first to see, and then to read the article on sissy bounce in the july 26th new york times magazine and be able to gloat at an already year old familiarity with the subject. no one should be surprised anymore by our cutting edge cultural awareness. just remember that parade of purse queens at the armani spring/summer 2011 runway show in milan. plus, everyone knows that a times feature on anything means that it already got cool no more recently than six months ago. (they felt the need to let us know in both the top and style sections of sunday's paper that the fedora is trending. it's safe to assume that you can expect to see 'looking good in pants' syndicated at the nytimes.com 'portland journal' by the end of the year). the issue here is different.

bounce is a hip hop varietal common to new orleans, and sissy bounce is a sub-genre (in name only, really) coined by music writer alison fensterstock after the bunch of homos and cross-dressers stealing the national bounce stage. in the words of katey red, one of artists interviewed for the times article, "ain’t no such thing as 'sissy bounce.' it’s bounce music. it’s just sissies that are doing it." and katey's description of the crowd at one of her shows in dallas is enough to describe the scene: "mostly a bunch of nasty hos with they shorts up they ass, trying to shake like a dog."

'looking good in pants' readers are sure to be re-conjuring whatever images they brought to mind yesterday of the sistafist ladies doing a saturday night show. they wouldn't be too far off the mark, because sissy bounce is also marching proudly to the beat of the boner parade. it's more than probably the case that sistafist (or the beats of their djs at least) are conscious manifestations of the spread of bounce. even for his untimeliness, jonathan dee, the writer of the times article, deserves respect for his perspicacity on an important point: "the fact is that the notion of unabashedly gay hip-hop is like catnip to some alternative-music scenes around the country." can all of portland say "myeooowww?"

the crucial issue, the crux of the rise (or media worthiness) of sissy bounce is, however, slightly removed. the BUTT blog was promoting bounce artist sissy nobby as early as april 21st of 2009 and featured a post that linked to this mix in may of the same year. (the mix is currently testing successful for non-dance non-exercise non-movement accompaniment. projections for dance are also good.) and damned if bounce wasn't the soundtrack of pride 2009.

for anyone who missed the first season of "glee," the gays pretty much make culture. by the magic of nineties television, the gays have also been bestowed the power to make culture safe -- just as the gays were made safe themselves by that same media phenomenon. a gay sensibility bred with a minority one is almost unstoppable -- or, at any rate, irresistibly consumable. that's looking good in pants, even if they're ugly. (follow us on the real estate market too!) no matter that bounce was just a flash in the pan for us last summer or, for that matter, for "some alternative-music scenes around the country."* it's not just something that angry black people do anymore. just letting you know, again, in case you don't pick up that magazine. we love you.

now that's music journalism. if only the sunday crossword didn't come with so much responsibility. you're welcome.

*mstrkrft out of toronto gave a nod to bounce on an eponymous track on "fist of god" (the single was out in spring 2008), but we all know that canada is much more in touch with its gay side than america.

THREE LADIES OF ILL REPUTE; or DOES THE CARPET MATCH THE DRAPES, DOES THE BELT MATCH THE BOOTS?

andrea joined the bike gang for one night back in 2006 -- or 2007 -- or sometime back when there was still a bike gang, sometime around 2006 or 2007. caroline went by creflo back when there was a bike gang, and she was missing one of her front teeth. creflo meant something like missing one of your front teeth. andrea was missing a front tooth then too. she's still missing a front tooth, but she had a gold one at one point in between then and now. caroline's new tooth is of the stuff that dentists use to make new teeth. back when both andrea and creflo were missing front teeth it made sense for andrea to join up for a night after she ran into the gang on the esplanade and saw caroline smile. gang activities were mostly drinking. you know, community service.

caroline hitched herself to a different, more permanent though maybe less stable wagon, but andrea is still giving back. sometimes she makes little apartments in her mind as safe havens for kids on drugs. that way the kids can just laugh when they're tripping and fall into the bathtub. but no one's made it so easy for andrea. bad dre dre (she's the one with the badass moniker now) has done time. "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." but that hasn't changed her mission. she takes the world as it comes. she even went to church and told the preacher, and now he wants her as a sunday school teacher. red lipstick, red hair, pink lips and all.

go ahead and call her a whore. she'll ask you to, actually, during her introduction in the sistafist anthem, but be warned of an important distinction: she's a drunk ass bitch, not a prostitute. all this will rhyme in your head once you've heard bad dre dre, em snatch and c-bag rapping and dancing on stage in front of a crowd of bobbing, grinding portland. and you'll know it's portland because of its initial reluctance to dance, despite that everyone in the crowd is there with friends to see their friends and knows that only their friends could have fostered something like sistafist, and only in this city.

sistafist is "three sassy drunk bitches dripping with gold" (beats by dj solomon and armatronix), and their lyrics are endlessly quotable. quotable not in the ironic tee hee hee way that so much indie rap gets off on, but in the way of you're desperately jealous of those drunk ass bitches when you see them walking single file over the lower walkway of the steel bridge looking like ghetto fabulous abbey road and you'd do anything to shine like them. they're serious, and it's not easy sounding serious when you're rhyming on boner parades and penis gauntlets. (as fun as both of those things might sound, don't doubt that dre dre, em and c-bag will drink you under the table, fuck you, do a rubbing of your credit card and then fuck your friend.)

portland is renowned for ill repute. before the nineties you couldn't do anything here without two forms of id. for anyone familiar with portland's shady, divey past, these three ladies aren't an unlikely appearance on the scene. and that's how it should be. especially in summertime: we want it sweaty and loud and dancing in heels, and then we want to be sweaty and loud and dancing in heels. that's a saturday night. gay or straight. visitors welcome. andrea is from iowa...or she used to date someone from there. it doesn't matter.

just be ready, as sistafist will tell you, to "give it up, on the floor. show us what the fuck you came here for." don't be too nervous, though. most of the rest of them probably won't be dancing at first either. plus, community service gang or no, you'll always have a cool place to crash if you get too messed up, courtesy of bad dre dre.

1983

mona sings summer '10:

call me a hipster i plead the fifth
ain't no white subculture gonna claim this
summertime love summertime fun
grab me a boy cause i'm gonna get some
ready set go foot on the mark
i won't charge you this time it's off the chart
but let it be known this shit ain't free
beauty fades quick it's a luxury

buy a guy a new purse?

BORED IS AS BORED DOESN'T; or, BOREDOM ISN'T AS BOREDOM DOES

an aunt of mine, the sister of my mother's that, per family lore, sailed fast and loose away from her parents on the first yacht out of the holy see, once cautioned me against the pitfalls of too much itinerancy. at the time, i was visiting her on a psychological convalescence away from my own parents at a cabin she owned in the woods in tennessee. it was the summer after my college graduation, and we spent the better part of our weekend together talking past and future plans over roasts and whiskey. addressing my proclivity for sporadic and impulsive relocation, my aunt gave me a piece of advice of the sort that an early twenty-something can only take from his mother's sister when he's shared with her most of a bottle of drank: "christopher," she told me, "there's no geographical cure."

that aunt no longer lives in tennessee, and i moved from the midwest to the west coast not long after that visit. but her advice was surely still sage, at least inasmuch as i remember it half a decade later. novelty and dynamic environs can be grand for self discovery, but don't expect to discover someone else.

and that's a sentiment very much akin to the wisdom that the mother of the unnamed protagonist in lee rourke's the canal imparts (in recollection) to him after a childhood attempt at running away. the son can't remember exactly what made him leave home in the first place, or most of what his mother said after he came home later that day, but one thing did stick: "there's no point in running away. never run away, all you find is yourself. there's nothing else to find." and it would seem from his actions throughout the rest of the canal that our protagonist has taken that to heart.

the canal is about boredom. more specifically, it's about embracing boredom -- or at least not being distracted by the things that we regularly use to distract ourselves from boredom. when not in memory, the protagonist spends the book sitting at a bench along the titular canal. he sometimes shares the bench with a woman. (at times he seems to want to share the bench with the woman more than she does.) they talk. and that's the 'looking good in pants' plot summary. you'll find plenty of analyses of those two's relationship elsewhere. to be honest, the boredom statement already felt too marketing tagline clichéd. i'd like not to wonder how many other reviews have opened their plot explanations with that salvo. it's generic and mundane, and, well, that's just boring.

the other critics can treat rourke's language, too. i haven't read rourke's collection of stories, so can't speculate on the idiosyncrasies of his voice in the canal. or i won't, at any rate. and anyway, the canal doesn't particularly present anything syntactically striking. not to say that the writing is poor, anything but. the prose of boredom, however, isn't as dry or as sparing as we should expect...but the jacket copy can tell you that.

more important is what presumes the boredom of the canal. in other words, what's exciting about lee rourke's boredom (everyone writing about the canal should get to wallow in the cleverness of that juxtaposition) is the contemporary significance of what got him there. rourke's protagonist sits at his bench and, literally, watches the world go by. and as the world goes by, he has time to wonder, a luxury that the passing world hasn't afforded itself among its many luxuries. we are the new urbanites. the gentrifiers. the designer vanguard of post-industrial lifestyle capitalism. and yet something is wanting. a good deal of something. it always is and has been, of course; and so that something is analogous to the dissatisfaction and ennui of every other generation of literary discontent, but not exactly the same; and significant because our crisis isn't for our want of purpose but for the impossibility of its realization. the promise of our creative uniqueness was sadly hollow. we are, verily, "nothing but here. endless here."

in that sense, rourke would seem to be nothing but a contemporary mouthpiece for an all too familiar trope of existentialism. and granted, the canal doesn't fail to evoke camus, genet, sartre in its discussion of violence and the isolated individual -- a theme set off by a dialogue between the couple at the bench on the motivations behind international terrorism (an element that felt uncomfortably too topical at first but finds its place in the whole). that dialogue then contrasts with the acts (active or recounted) of the characters themselves. but rourke's individuals are not dispassionate, or even detached. in fact, it's the desire to impart significance to their actions (or their disappointment at the loose motivations of others') that allow the man and woman at the canal to turn the familiar trope on its head.

one section of the canal is titled "weight," which can't but encourage comparisons with the similarly titled sections of the unbearable lightness of being, whose author, milan kundera, owes an undeniable debt to the (especially french) existentialists. but unlike in kundera, rourke's characters struggle not with an essential futility or the insignificance of "lightness," but with the gravity of an amorphous weight. in the canal, the march of society isn't the insurmountable monolith that it is for kundera. for rourke, existence is innately weighted, and boredom is embraced as a vantage from which to discover and confront real life. we're here and that's it. you might even get the best perspective on yourself when you stay put and actually have a look. just to chase a shiny new future isn't actually going to get us there. "never run away, all you find is yourself." and, sitting by the canal while a new london rages to build itself around them, rourke's characters struggle with the understanding that, indeed, there's nothing else to find. so why is everyone running?

the coots and swans on the canal are generally unmoved by other than their day to days, only occasionally occasionally disturbed by dredgers or a flying motor scooter. the rest of them, though, look to the tv. they dress smartly and conduct affairs. they expect great things out of steel and plate glass. and in that fragile high tower they know that they're special, and they fill their time so as never to be bored.

rourke's greatest success in the canal is, perhaps, in his elucidation of that phenomenon, his subtle confrontation of our modern obsession with fame. ironically, it's the same twenty-first century development that's promised us recognition for our store bought identities that also affords rourke's protagonist the leisure to sit by the canal and be bored by it all. there's a kind of love story, too, raised voices at times, and even some nearly melodramatic gallantry. but we've all read love stories, had quarrels. how boring. farcically almost, and for worse or for better, that's all there is. at one point, in another recollected anecdote, our man at the canal recounts: "it was at that moment, there on the cold pavement, that i realised i was ordinary and not destined for great things." not so the canal.

HOW TO HOW TO; or, ON KEEPING UP APPEARANCES

i finished the canal nearly two weeks ago, and i've been reading the woman in the dunes. i did, though, venture off the summer reading list to read the wild creatures (sam d'allesandro's collection of stories, mentioned at the BUTT blog a couple of weeks ago) and to review bonsai by alejandro zambra. the zambra book i'd read last year over a week during which i spent a part of my lunch each day in the aisle of the bookstore standing and reading one of its sections. it's short, but i wouldn't necessarily recommend reading it in one sitting as zambra's new book has been recommended in the review at powells.com, the website that showed a used copy of that new book at powell's burnside where neither i nor a staff member were able to find said copy after i rushed to get it about five minutes later. so i settled for buying a copy of bonsai -- of which of course powell's burnside had five new copies at a reduced price. damn bookstore. and now i couldn't want the private lives of trees more.

reviews of the canal are popping up everywhere; but nowhere you'd look, and that's why you come here. expect my review (to be date stamped) tomorrow. both the book and my impressions are, worry not, still fresh. the salon.com book club is already a failure. well, i suppose they did discuss through that one book. but we're not so ashamed anymore of a club not springing from 'looking good in pants' -- though it's sounding like melville house might give free copies of every man dies alone to any interested clubs, so...

in lieu, we'd hoped to start on a series on date lurking, but the cat was let out early on our subject, and although our cover wasn't, purportedly, blown (i.e. no identifications could be made), a victimless crime merits an unsuspecting victim. but oh the telling! what power of observation! what insight! bravura! alack.

this summer's been a bit of a daze. it's not the sort of thing that you really remember, but i remember waking up in the night last night and summarily declaring my confusion. and nineties again this weekend.

HOW TO CONDUCT AN ARTISTIC CORRESPONDENCE FOR THE LATER STIMULATION OF BACKLIST SALES; or, ON THE DANGERS OF PARASOMNIAS

dear poop lady:

it only took seeing your piece of mail on the entryway table to rush to a response. of course it was yours, because of the color. not that they're always the same color, but they're colored. this one is green. and all the better for it having been on top of a red one, not even in my pile, found, because of the color and the way you type my name, after the quick but petulant disappointment of seeing nothing in the box. your letter in another person's pile. "then at last the power of the mind to quit the body is manifest, and perhaps we fear or hate or wish annihilated this phantom of ourselves." but there's a third set of feet in that kiddie pool you drew, and perhaps... no need to prise an invitation if you've sent the drawing, probably, is what you're trying to say? not to sound too mawkish (which i love sounds like maudlin and means the same thing so reassures me about why it's called double u, and i know you appreciate that). a whiskey sour doesn't sound bad either, although july has been more sober than not and that's not entirely because of the sickness, although i have been sick and that's why i missed all three of your shows which must have made you wonder i'd hope, and i hope that you understand because you sent that mail. i haven't read it.

but of course i'll marry you.

love,

christopher

GET YOUR FIX. GUARANTEED; or, ON THE JOY OF FOOD SEX

abraham fixes bikes. that's the name of the shop where abraham fixes bikes, and you can get yours fixed at 3508 n williams (at the corner of fremont).

if there's one thing portlanders like, it's acting like we think europeans would act, and bicycles are indispensable to the pursuit of that goal. and if there are several things that portlanders like, then niche identity consumption is on the list no lower than the top of the middle. so portland hasn't any shortage of bike shops, and those shops are each of them singular in offering a veil of uniqueness that will ensure you're who your individuality demands you are both on and off your bike. got a problem with your bicycle in pdx? there's guaranteed to be a local (meaning not just in the neighborhood but also not to be found in anywhere outside of portland) bike shop within walking distance of whichever microbrewery or coffee shop (likely serving microroasted portland coffee) you happen to have found to ease the pain.

after having finally admitted the necessity of installing my new pedals, i decided against riding up to alpenrose velodrome for the thursday track series, rationalizing that miss by telling myself i'd clean my bike in preparation for the installation and go up for some part of the alpenrose challenge this weekend. the schedule at the oregon bicycle racing association website listed the challenge for "7/16-18," so i assumed that i'd be able to catch something sunday afternoon. i assumed incorrectly, though, and now it's sunday morning and i've finally gotten around to checking race times to find out that the last set starts five minutes ago. if the bike ride to the track didn't take about as long as a set of races will probably last i still don't think i'd try to make it, if only because it's cool and overcast this morning and post race chances of skin are slim. luckily, mark blackwelder and tony kic must've been eliminated earlier in the weekend. they did me the consolation of showing up to my sunday morning personal computing sentry, and i got in a quick ogle here at the albina press.

but to say that i considered riding to the track is also to say that i've replaced my pedals, which is also to say that my new drivetrain parts arrived and are installed. that's math. had my old chain not been so filthy, i probably could have made it for the thursday series, but that would have required some real enterprise. even though i got the call about the chain and chainring i ordered from the veloshop early thursday afternoon, i hadn't any reason to think to bring my new cog with me to work. and then there was my not owning a lockring tool or a chain whip. and i wasn't going to suffer the embarrassment of asking a mechanic to remove my old parts without cleaning them -- despite it having been ryan at the veloshop who told me that the greasy muck buildup was probably what was keeping the teeth of my cog and chainring grabbing my chain correctly. and, of course, there was that abraham fixes bikes about five blocks from my house.

as much as i hate giving my money to molly cameron (the owner of the veloshop who, incidentally, was here sitting with mark and tony until just a little while ago and whose presence -- even in that company -- only spurred me to voice my denunciation in very certain terms), her shop is close to work. what's more, ryan knows my bike and the man who made it. in other words, i trust the staff at that shop to understand the needs of my image. i saw how much he marked up the chainring, and, sure, i could've feasibly gotten it elsewhere at closer to cost, but i'll save you a long digression on that homo drama at least. after all, i'm close to letting you forget about abraham again.

i'd sent an email to abraham (abraham fixes bikes, by the way, just to make sure we're back on course) requesting a quote for the installation of a new chain, cog and chainring, and he'd gotten back to me very promptly. i'll admit, however, to being unaware of abraham's venture until last week. i rarely ride on williams anymore -- or that far east on fremont for that matter. when i do, it's almost invariably outside of abraham's business hours (10-6, monday through friday). but one thing that doesn't escape the 'looking good in pants' information dredge is hottness, and in addition to his impressively smart style for someone in such a dirty occupation, abraham is a dreamboat. (now look at his website.) the near impossibility of my getting a new drivetrain running on thursday only made it easier to plan on taking my business to abraham the next day, which i'd been essentially set on since tuesday anyway.

abraham's business is impressive. it can't be easy to set up shop as a bike mechanic in a city with so many of them. demonstrate your dependability and the quality of your service and people will take note, i suppose. done. abraham satisfies, guaranteed. he even did some extra diagnostic work for me when i took my bike back to him uneasy about a crunching i felt in my chain on my first ride and showed sincere interest in my reporting back once i'd sussed out a remedy. (later at the veloshop, ryan assured me it was just an aspect of the "burliness" of that brand of chain and that it should settle in. the builder wasn't as convinced when i consulted him over the phone, and i might just get to order a new round of parts...)

abraham also, as a point of his stated operating philosophy, reuses old parts wherever he can, and environmentalism is definitely on that list of the several things portlanders like. i almost felt bad taking him my fancies, but i'd ground at least several thousand miles out of my old parts, and, what's more, the fancies never fail to crack the facade at the bike shop. that went literally on friday: you should see him smile.

friday morning i let myself toss under the covers for a few snoozes before getting out of bed, during which time i gave myself over to a spell of half waking dreams. in what began as a conscious effort, i pictured myself going to pick up my now like new bicycle from abraham fixes bikes. i was caught entirely off guard when abraham asked if maybe i'd accept a waiver of his (very reasonable) fee and go on a date with him instead. i am floored. we start making out. then i must have lapsed into sleep because abraham turned into a doughnut. it was delicious. and just my niche. top that, molly.

THE REVOLUTION WILL BE SELF-FULFILLED; or, HOW TO BLOG ABOUT BLOGGING ABOUT BLOGGING

announcing the new internet episteme, which has in fact coalesced even if blogger wants to underline the word in red.

expect to get real tired of people talking about online content management as "curating." i suspect that the term will make its way from high minded self-reference in the blogosphere to painful and constant mention at painful and constant workplace meetings. there's a book that's recently out -- or on its way -- that's specifically on the topic (of curating, not on how noisome the word will become; that's my job). i'm not doing my job very thoroughly today, though, as i've no intention of looking through deleted emails or searching the web for the title. bad curator.

you heard it here...fourth, maybe?

IN INFINITE JEST (BUT REALLY IN ALL SERIOUSNESS)

the literature section of the internet (that room near the toilet without any big screens that smells like stale wine) is all abuzz about this 'i write like' site. notwithstanding the apparent similarity of my review of individual projection to the writing of chuck palahniuk (a completely unintentional irony and the sort of seeming bias i'd hope always to avoid but now feel obliged to admit), i write, more often than not, like david foster wallace. although i suspect that means i'm hopelessly derivative and, as the japanese would say, now-y (spelled naui in japanese), i would appreciate further insight from anyone who has read any of mr. wallace's work.

incidentally, i write like him in this post, too. i'd compliment myself by telling you how i've been known to write like joyce and nabokov as well, but then i'd have to come clean on my dan brown moments. and i'm done copying and pasting for the day.

but god. how rude of me! who do you write like? every other post in the world about that meme ended with that line. and no one fucking commented anyway. it's officially excised as far as posterity's concerned.

update, 7/17: two days behind most of the kids i care about, but at least it got here before the huffington post.

THE NEW GIRL IN TOWN

'hipster puppies' already got a book deal. photo blogs seem to go from inception to print the fastest, but even so, two and a half months (january 30 to the date of that announcement) is dishearteningly quick. back in the day, i suppose that someone who wanted to make a book of captioning pictures of dogs could have just found an agency and had them pitch the idea to a publisher; which is to say they'd have had a book in no time at all as far as having to keep up a blog goes. that's some condolence. some. we just thought we were doing so well, is all.

so i made some time to think by taking the long way home along highway 30 and over the st. johns bridge. i probably shouldn't have, but it's been too long since i've ridden more than ten consecutive miles, and i wouldn't let myself shake the idea once i'd gotten it. the hipster puppies really had nothing to do with it -- although i did happen to visit that blog today and click back through enough pages to get the news, and i did plan on sharing it somehow.

my left pedal starting seizing about a month ago, or maybe a short while longer, but in truth i have absolutely no recollection, which just goes to show how much i'm willing to tempt fate in the name of thrift -- or some overthought extension of cost and maximum beautification of my bicycle. thrift isn't exactly right, because i've already bought a new set of pedals and have been porting them in my bag for going on two weeks now. true, the only 15mm wrench i carry is a socket wrench for removing my wheels, but i still take comfort in knowing that i could hypothetically pull a switch out once i finally grind down all of the bearings in the problem pedal and the body falls off the spindle.

i've known what to expect since the grinding started, because the same thing happened to my right pedal last december, and when the thing finally went (in a downpour at the edge of a speed bump on fremont), i went with it. i'd been over lubricating that pedal to silence the screeching and crackling of the bearings melting down, and i'll admit that the silver ooze seeping out of the pedal body after its final failure was exciting in its approximation of blood. had it been my own blood, my excitement would definitely have been tempered. my reaction to that is usually a faint. thankfully, the worst i got from that incident was wet(ter). though it did, i guess, make me a little later to my scheduled plans.

why risk it again? well, because i finally ordered new drivetrain parts the day after picking up my pedals, and it seems a shame not to have all of my pretty new fancies put on my bike at once. let it ride like nearly new for a couple of days, right? i'm going to have to clean the hell out of my bike before doing anything near the cranks anyway, so there's not wanting to do that twice, too. vanity a cruel mistress? she pales in comparison to laziness.

so i probably shouldn't have ridden highway 30, especially with my road-side pedal about to go, and especially since i hadn't put my new pedals -- or even the socket wrench or an extra tube -- back in my bag after hosing it off on sunday, as useless as any of those items might actually have proven. but a cheap disaster like a flat would've had me walking up and over the bridge to the number 4 bus at the least. i've been there before, and it's the unexpected waste of time (and it's easy avoidability) that really stings. but, i rode the long way anyway because i felt like it. the air was cool, but the sun was still warm; and there's a stretch of 30 about a mile from the bridge that's shaded in the evening by the trees in forest park, and the shade lasts until the top of the approach to the bridge so you've enough time to cool off before the second half of the ride back towards town.

despite the hospitable atmospheric conditions, though, this time the bridge approach had me a little scared. drivers are generally not ungracious about allowing cyclists to cross the two lanes of traffic separating the bike lane from the left turn lane that puts you on course to the bridge. but it's quite a hill after that, and in addition to the dying pedal, i'd recently replaced my cleat bolts without replacing my cleats (of course i'd want to wait to install the new cleats that came with the pedals until i'd installed the pedals themselves), and the little bit of grime between the old cleats and the new bolts has the bolts sticking out just a hair's breadth too far to guarantee them completely locking on to my pedals, which means my feet sometimes come unintentionally unstuck when i'm pulling up at full force. and on a hill, that pulling up is kind of key.

no problem. or, i should say, i didn't run into one. but there's always that jackass who ignores the "bikes on roadway" sign and must not see that there are pedestrians using the narrow sidewalk who waits until he's right behind you at the middle of the bridge to blare his horn and then swerve around you shaking his fist. there's another fucking lane, asshole, and hardly any traffic. the semis and buses don't have any problem moving along smoothly and safely. and so that guy reminds you that it's him that's going to cause you to crash and not the anticipated mechanical failure. it's always the unexpected things that do it. the view from up there is to die for, though. really. ha.

all that just to get home and tell you that tavi made the blog roll. tavi is thirteen. she writes about fashion. she writes like a thirteen year old about fashion. but it's obvious that tavi is an intelligent and thoughtful thirteen year old. is it more important when someone like tavi writes impressions of things that are similar to reactions you find elsewhere on the internet? apparently. she gets flown to runway shows and fancy parties. she had at least one magazine cover last fall. if tavi said that she really dug those big, old-timey panties from the dolce and gabbana men's s/s 2011 collection, would they sell better than as a result of us saying so here? (that's a zen kind of a question because no one reads this blog and tavi doesn't cover menswear.) teenagers just use the internet well. you never sound good comparing yourself to them.

we can't disparage ourselves any further in this post, because, yes, some people do pay attention to our small efforts. case in point, here is dolce and gabbana's take on me and monique in the backyard with the chickens. madonna does monique pretty well. i might even suggest monique go blond for the rest of the summer. and damn if i'm not looking good in those pants. one note to the stylist, though: we're not allowed to have roosters in the city.

YOUR DADDY'S RICH AND YOUR MAMMA'S GOOD LOOKIN'

summertime full frontal; portland, or, u.s.a. consecutive days of ninety-five degrees in upper latitude sun isn't something that the dewy skinned denizens of the pacific northwest are accustomed to, and we complain as much as we complain about the rains during the rest of the year. but that's just custom. our beside-ourselves-with-giddiness(ness?) is in no way diminished. the perennial dilemma: stay in town for the cut-offed, tank topped and tattooed, or head out for strange nature and sunburn. unfortunately, we're the only major west coast city not actually on the coast (though, granted, i don't think seattle even has anything like the beaches we have at sauvie island). but as such, when the living's easy, portlanders head to the river.

strangely, the northernmost point of portland is at the confluence of the willamette and the columbia, but "the river" refers to neither. and, in fact, it can be any of the clackamas, the sandy or the washougal (plus some, i'm sure, i've yet to experience), but still it's just "the river" -- and we know that you're a local when you can correctly pronounce the names of everywhere that might mean.

the river is a bit of a drive, but they're all well short of the four hour round trip to the ocean. come to think of it, i don't think that any river hangouts are actually in the city proper, but it's much easier to stuff five people and a picnic in the car when relief is just past traffic on the 84 or the 205 and not on the other side of a parking morass across the coastal range. the old swimming hole charm of the river wins it points over the ocean too, a nostalgically classic essential when the days get as stifling as these past few have been.

whether any of my friends has a swimming hole in her past i don't know. i certainly don't. to be honest, i'm not big on the out of doors, and it took me until last summer to accept a river invitation (or, keeping with that honesty, to get one). but the breed of americana rustica native to the river (which, incidentally, only drinks beer that costs less than six dollars a six pack) isn't at all alien to the city kids raised on fat inheritances of boomer tradition, even if they're just starting to peel back the irony and have real experiences of their own. thank god.

spring knows a spot at the clackamas that might be a secret. or it might be that people don't like fording the water twice with their crap held over their heads or scraping through a hundred yards of blackberries. then, sometimes, other people are there regardless. the secret spot is worth it, though. it's technically trespassing, but we paid for parking this time, so on balance we're on the right side of the law, right? the blackberries threaten to ruin the legs you've been looking forward to having seen in those sateen roller shorts, but the smell of the verdant heat alone merits the trek. really, you're walking through the bushes and the heat smells green; and you remember that yes, you live in a rain forest, and, but for the rain, it's amazing.

our spot at the clackamas is along a small inlet with a rocky abutment in its center. guessing from the rusted poles coming out of the water near its edge and the ruined concrete wall that separates the blackberry path from the inlet, the abutment was part of a bridge. to or from where i can't guess. there's sand between the water and the edge of the forest, but not much of it this past friday as the river was high, and there were others who'd made it to the spot before us. so we laid our towels on the rocks, which sounds better than concrete though that's more likely what it is. you can walk from the rocks into a deepish pool of still water, beyond which there's a fast current that runs across the mouth of the inlet. roll onto your back or your belly and you can ride the current its length, but the water's not deep, and losing your cool and dropping your posture means getting buffeted by the rocks.

just past the current is a pebbled shoal where i decided i'd make a spectacle of urination after one and a half red beers. it's easiest to get there by swimming to the upstream edge of the inlet and wading the current where it slows at a bend in the river before picking up over the rocks. the peeing was only half funny. or, at least i couldn't hear much laughter from the shore. i didn't have anything on my feet for that crossing and i've had a painfully awkward time taking steps. then insult adds itself to injury when i decide to get rid of the empty beer cans and sports drink bottles i find left on the shoal. i'm trying to swim the pool back to the towels with two armloads of buoyant trash, and i'm flailing, sputtering, trying to keep my head above the water and keep the water out of my mouth. after all, there's pee in that river. that got a genuine laugh.

then time in the sun. more red beer in the sun. berries and peaches in the sun. reapplication of sunblock. summertime full frontal. reading in the sun. talking with friends in the sun. gossip with friends in the sun. you serious, francie? no shade in the sun, though. no shade. and no sparkling mint and berry drinks. not only did i forget to pick any mint before leaving home, but the water at the back of the abutment stole the two bottles of san pellegrino we'd buried in the shallows to chill. by the time we gave up looking for them (which after so much sun and old german is a stupidly long while), all our ice had melted and bottle three was spared the guillotine.

past the shoal are two deep sections of calmer water bordered by the current that comes around the bend to the mouth of the inlet, the terrifying one that runs the edge of the bluff on the opposite side of the river and a third current that joins the other two. silly on beer and ecstatic at knowing that we'd all weathered another fourth and fifth winter (those are the ones that happen in june) without (completely) losing it, i decided i'd swim for a while against the currents and through those two calmer sections. it was great, but you shouldn't follow my example. i haven't gotten a tv signal at home since the first year i lived here, but i can't remember ever catching a local summer newscast that didn't report on someone drowning under the influence on the clackamas. but stupid hindsight just ruins my flow. those currents gave me some killer exercise. my arms still hurt so good. but the best part was hearing monique's thirteen year old sister laughing behind me as she rode the current over the rocks...and remembering how dumb with excitement i was doing the same thing for the first time last summer.

those rocks are like razors, though. good and bad. on the good side, the cuts don't hurt to clean and they're easy to bandage. unfortunately, combined with the scrapes from the blackberry bushes, they mean that having my legs waxed with monique next weekend as planned isn't going to reveal anything you'd want to look at. an argument for staying in the city, i suppose. but i wasn't hearing arguments at that point. in any case, we made it home by seven, and everyone was still cut-offed and tank topped. just in time for round two.

BUT IT SOUNDS SO MUCH BETTER THAN "GERMANENESS". . .

'survival of the book' just (via a tertiary reference) turned us on to 'the second pass,' where, in the truest spirit of finding the end of the internet at work, i abandoned my review of neglected 'sotb' posts and started tracking back through posts at the site i linked to from it.

i wasn't able to find the "spirited reviews of older books" mentioned in the nathan ihara article that was mentioned at 'sotb,' but i did come across a blog post on that laura miller essay on the changing of the literary gatekeepers that we discussed here at the end of june. 'the second pass' beat us to the discussion (for shame, i know), and twists the dagger by opening with the author's own admission of being "a few days late" (plus the author seems to have had a varied and exciting career).

read the post if you're interested in the topic. it does well in addressing some of the arguments made against miller's thesis in the comments of her original article. otherwise, waste your time ordering me a pair of those quote unquote bookends. we bring it up here only to remind everyone again of just how germane it is to be 'looking good in pants.' no boasting, though. after all, we were dead center average as far as the curve was drawn on this particular discussion.

for the time being, i'm claiming the word "germanity" in the name of this blog. real dictionaries refuted that one too. it wasn't just blogger this time. but i prefer it because of our relation to le chancelier allemand. and there's really no point arguing with french diplomacy.

AGAIN WITH THE LEMON CAKE?

in the now proud 'looking good in pants' tradition of writing principally on books that AREN'T on our published reading lists, i announce aimee bender's reading from the particular sadness of lemon cake. it's tonight at powell's downtown, 7:30 p.m. pacific.

summer is (fingers crossed, knock on something) finally here for almost sure, and that -- for me in my portland incarnation -- means* another series of readings and book signings. maybe i just don't pay as much attention when the weather's different, or maybe the harder hitters only get sent out when it's really warm. or maybe neither's the case, because i saw mary gaitskill -- and she signed my copy of veronica -- in the spring, which is not during summer. in any case, book tours are less and less profitable (i.e. more and more canceled or not scheduled at all), so i'm just happy i get the opportunity to maybe come up with questions to ask an author in person at all.

and the books they get signed. some of them i read, others sit on the shelf or in piles hoping that their resale values will rise enough to take them somewhere more interesting. total buyer's remorse has been extremely rare, but i haven't managed to avoid it completely.

i won't be at bender's reading. whether there are extra autographed (and still discounted) copies of her book still at powell's tomorrow will tell me once and for all if i should read it. fate, though, can definitely be persuaded by the purchase of a gift by anyone in attendance.

*in addition, summer means watching track races at alpenrose, berry picking rides to the beach at sauvie island, trips to the river. boys without shirts, in other words. be waiting.

GENERAL UPDATE ON ALL FRONTS; or, HOW NOT TO LOOK GOOD IN PANTS

have you ever been to the suburbs? i grew up in one but always seem to forget about their true colors. and that most people live in them. but that's where "eclipse" is playing on the imax screen (things are big in the suburbs), so that's where i went yesterday to watch it.

i never finished watching "new moon," because the site i used to stream it for free made me take a marketing survey for access and, although the kfc survey just required me lying about which of kfc's chicken products i like best, the second one i took after having to close my streaming window for some now forgotten work reason was an unbelievably long offer for feminine hygiene coupons that i gave up on after twenty minutes. luckily, monique's thirteen year old sister is visiting and she caught me up. but she's also the larger reason i went to the suburbs to see "eclipse" on the imax screen, so, in a way, she just owed me an explanation for something anyway.

"eclipse" was ok except for the part in which edward talks about wanting to get married so that bella can be sure her soul is saved before she gets turned into a vampire. it's embarrassing that i'm going to argue the limits of suspending my disbelief as regards the twilight saga (which continues here, somehow), but if i have to put up with stephanie meyer's mormon crap in a $17.50 movie, i get to point out that edward is, like, 90, and that unless vampires aren't able to process experience towards growth in wisdom then his affections can't really be all that virtuous. what a waste of time.

so of course i left the theater excited about reading book four. the canal is quality, as i told lee rourke himself on july 4th when i saw him on the chat box. i also told him that he couldn't stop me from day drinking because it was independence day. lee rourke is british, so i'm not sure what time it was where he was typing or what he thought of my holiday spirit. i should have words on his book this week -- and those words will be with you. come prepared. but i've justified reading breaking dawn by insisting to myself that it will help my understanding of translation to read the japanese copy a friend offered to lend me. and wayne told me to read it. and i just want to know what happens, ok? thank you.

but in the suburbs. there's a place you can go after seeing "eclipse" on the imax screen called claim jumper. claim jumper is really big, too. and they have big deserts. and desert is what my friend miyuki (the friend who's lending me japanese book four and who got us "eclipse" on the imax screen tickets ahead of time) wanted to get for monique's sister. monique got angry at me for letting her sister get a giant brownie covered in ice cream and candy sauce. the only reason she found out was because we had to bring most of it home. i really do believe that you have to live in the suburbs to eat one by yourself in a sitting. i just finished what we brought home of the brownie. i ordered a piece of chocolate cake that was really six pieces of chocolate cake glued together with fudge. i'm about to have the rest of that too. (i wasn't able to finish mine either, which is proof that i live in the city.) i really wanted to eat the rest in the bathtub while i read the canal, because everything bad to eat seems more fun to eat in the bath; but eating and reading while sweating and without a fancy tray doesn't hold its charm for long.

so i ran after work. and i'll probably do it again tomorrow after my two dance classes, too. it's silly, but i don't think i can't eat the cake. and second desert (after a night when i ate about three) isn't the best way to stay looking good in pants. but then again, neither is will power.

update: the dessert leftovers were not finished before bedtime. night cake at 2:30 a.m.

ON WALKING A NOT SO FINE LINE: KAZUSHIGE ABE HELPS US SOUND INFORMED

in 2006, the nobel committee awarded orhan pamuk its prize for literature based on his discovery of "new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures." but the greater value of pamuk's beautifully described but undisguisedly self-conscious fiction lies in its investigation of what are often the merely situational differences between the craft of timely storytelling and plagiarism. the meta-drama of that theme has played out for pamuk himself in the charges of plagiarism that have dogged him throughout his career. and that's not irony, it's the point.

literary theft is not so terrible a challenge to the world of belles lettres as someone like me should generally be thought to argue. i would, rather, go so far as to say that some of best works of fiction are the ones that are aware of their unoriginality. indeed, the legacy of twentieth century literature, including in its non-western manifestations, has largely been to demonstrate the insurmountability of repetition and overlap (be that among peers or across eras). the art of the steal, so to speak, has become a respected and stimulating genre in itself. which is not to recommend outright plagiarism, or advance a system of literary production under which authors are not secure in their rights to their works and to proper recognition and compensation. but stories themselves are cheap, and new ones are nearly as rare as conventional produce at a portland potluck.

but even for that overwritten disclaimer, which was, in case either of us missed my point, meant to indicate that i find absolutely nothing wrong with a book bearing heavy narrative similarities to another work, my humdrum impression of kazushige abe's individual projection (ip from here) has its foundation on those very grounds.

ip is written as a diary, the diary of onuma (no first name given), a late twenty-something film school graduate working as a projectionist at a double feature theater in shibuya, tokyo. the diary format is useful in restricting the perspective of the novel to onuma's personal experience, especially insofar as that enables abe to hide the possibilities that certain events might have been edited by hallucination or that certain characters might be projections of onuma himself -- hide them at least until onuma confronts those possibilities on his own. the novel also begins in medias res, and a diary is an easy vantage from which onuma can narrate the events of the five years between his graduation from film school and his return to tokyo while saving abe some literary face.

those events, by the way, surround onuma's involvement with a private martial arts academy in his hometown, that involvement having begun with onuma and a group of his classmates deciding to shoot a documentary film about the eccentric middle aged man, masaki (no first name given), who opened the academy not long after his arrival in the town. sure enough (which is a slightly more deferential way of saying OF COURSE), onuma and friends abandon the documentary and devote themselves to masaki, the group and to being trained as super spy killers. after the group's ransom of a local yakuza boss for a (dud? we never find out) plutonium bomb and masaki's arrest, onuma is back in tokyo and pulled back into his past by the (accidental? we never find out) death of five of his compatriots in a highway crash. that event is recounted by onuma early in the book and serves as onuma's motivation for relating the story of the academy. oh yeah, and onuma has migraines that he treats with forced, irregular sleep; he entertains himself in the projection booth by splicing frames from a pile of discards into damaged reels; and the movie theater explodes at the book's climax right when onuma starts filling in the blanks he's written. yes. ip is japanese fight club.

i don't think that kazushige abe reads english. actually, i've no reason to speculate in either direction. and, to be fair, i don't think that chuck palahniuk can read japanese. moot points though, really, because the two books were published almost simultaneously. (again to be fair, palahniuk's saw shelves slightly earlier.) and there's nothing to be speculated from the projectionist connection since abe himself is a film school graduate and intended to spend his career in film even after the success of his first novel. what's more, ip is uniquely tokyo with its yakuza and early teenage prostitutes and questionable pornography and never late trains (that fourth one, by the way, really is the most exciting and consistently baffling). i suppose there's a slim chance that abe read fight club quickly and meant for onuma, bored and quintessentially post-industrial, to be projecting tyler durden onto his own experience. i especially like that possibility (understanding its near impossibility) because it's predicated on either of two opposing a priori: that my japanese is insufficient to have caught the appropriate references or that i've read entirely too much into the book. and, ladies, that's why language is worth it.

ip just didn't do it as well. palahniuk's punchy vernacular does a story like this one better. it's the flesh on the skeleton that gives the import of character to the common sentiments of a generation. the anxious sobriety with which abe writes onuma is more appropriate of a simple thriller. maybe i don't have the appropriate cultural cv to appreciate that abe's telling is just more innately japanese.

but i really just say so to be gracious. his debut, day for night, treats the same post-bubble generation -- the first to grow up without want and then see the diminishing returns of a society poorly invested -- and its obsession with fame and the chosen status of the individual, and does so with (very literally) awe inspiringly sophisticated syntax and through a structure that follows from the protagonist's devotion to performance and the eye of the camera. and it's not the case that abe just did his best work early, because his more recent works, as maturity would dictate, exchange the convoluted sentences for an equally impressive diction that -- even for its sometimes confusing erudition -- is perfect in its nuance for telling abe's favorite aspects of japanese society (more alienation, nukes and porn). even better, those works are no less aware of the importance of artistic performance.

i suppose, for one final temper to my initial reaction to ip, that i'm just not up on my philosophy. i still don't know how to correctly translate the title. individual projection might in fact be correct, but in that case, it means less to do with film than psychology in that we should read it literally: the "individual projection" is onuma's diary itself (and there doesn't seem to be any sort of shooting technique or moving picture principle named by that term). but, it's funny, because that understanding should then take us right back to the screen inasmuch as we understand how strongly abe is connected to movie making and how much contemporary psycho-philosophical analysis, pertaining here specifically to what we should assume is happening beyond the "frame" of onuma's diary, has been influenced by film (never finished that book, by the way). and perhaps, that specific connection is why ip has been translated into french, as i mentioned here.

but, then again, maybe ip was just a sensation, and maybe the french are as willing to translate sensationalism as they are to treat it as fine literature in their own language. or maybe, as is pointed out in this delicious essay at bookslut, it's good to have a reminder that foreign books aren't as a rule any better than what's on the domestic market, even if it's easy to romanticize the value of what we read in a foreign languages.

so, it's not displeasure at abe for having written a novel on a duplicate premise that has me against ip, but rather that he didn't do the idea as well as he might have. and, being fair for the last time, chuck palahniuk has kicked that dead horse enough times to bring it back to life. but i'm going to scoff at ip anyway. read the rest.

or wait, you can't. so then second thoughts. who is my audience if it can't argue or, for that matter, take me at my word that the book exists to begin with? i won't deny that criticism is more the projection of the individual than any other art, but suddenly i feel an impassioned sympathy with onuma. and, sadly, it's only the wine that makes bearable that reconciliation.

ON THE ART OF THE COP OUT; or, WHEN WE'RE NOT LAZY WE'RE DRUNK

lately, anyway. but a week is far too long to go without a substantive post, so before a week would pass we're delivering some fluff. announcing: the 'looking good in pants' blog roll. we have one now. it is currently limited only by exclusivity (certainly not by neglect, because you're sure we read more sites than those dozen or so). but it will also inevitably grow, and we're happy to entertain suggestions.

for everyone who's been waiting for our takes on the spring/summer 2011 men's shows from milan and paris, distillations of most of the collections are available from some of our devotees. we do not promise to deliver on that front. although it would be powerfully fun, there are just too many other posts lined up on the brain to expect from ourselves a timely and comprehensive review. in lieu of a complete analysis: dear thom browne, the space suits were just gimmicky, and the clothes that were revealed from under them were nothing surprising. i love your suits, but just because "mad men" made it cool to dress like your designs doesn't mean you get to rest on your laurels. if pushed, i will call off all orders to have my more cosmopolitanly situated friends steal me things from your stores. also, those jackets were too wide. love, christopher.

individual projection is finished. much, much to say. but not now. i'm going to spend some time sorting out my pronouns. advice is welcome.