“New Releases” Sounds So Cathartic!
Reflections on the culture wars. It’s just what happens when you put people who’ve studied labor markets and read Foucault and Marx into a retail environment. [via S/FJ ]
More on Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly and Melville’s Army of Shadows shortly.
Meanwhile, I’m busy with: Dana Spiotta’s Eat the Document [via Tally Ho Soundsystem]; revisiting Thom Yorke’s The Eraser; selected works of Yasujiro Ozu.
Jewel in: Thorstein Veblen, Screwed ‘n’ Chopped!
Nickelodeon will premiere a new cartoon created by, written by, and starring Jewel this Fall. It’ll be called Punk Rock Angel Girl.
In the series, Punk Rock Angel Girl (PRAG) “discovers that a big, faceless corporation called Megacorp is trying to brainwash the youth of America to buy things
that nobody would ever need. Megacorp’s minions are disguised as celebrities  but underneath, they’re actually robots, and if revealed as such, they attack.”“It’s a faceless network conspiracy to make people stupid,” Jewel said, according to MTV news.
Jewel further explained: “Punk Rock Angel Girl, or PRAG, she’s just a teenager. She’s a punk rocker, but what I call punk rock is getting angry with a cause. A lot of the show is about anger as a transformational, useful tool. There’s a difference between pent-up aggression that’s randomly expressed  that’s just confrontational with no thought behind it  versus positive anger, thinking for yourself and making tough decisions.”
Punk Rock Angel Girl’s special power is her rebel yell: “Punk Rock Angel Girl gets a strange sensation when she gets angry, a feeling like she needs to throw up, which becomes a yodel as a lightning bolt comes out of her. These ‘Yellow Yodel Bolts of Energy’ help PRAG tap into her inner reserves of power  but she also discovers that everyone has this power within them,” MTV News says.
Still no word on whether P.R.A.G. will confront Gwen Stefani’s L.A.M.B.
Cryptopsy in: Once Was Not — Negations and Other Pleasantries, Live!
Cryptopsy
Wed., July 19, 7:30pm. $12. With Left to Vanish, Killing + Decomposed. First Unitarian Church, 2125 Chestnut St. 866.468.7619. www.r5productions.com
Last year’s Once Was Not marked Cryptopsy’s triumphant return from a five-year hiatus. A characteristically brutal yet instrumentally masterful album rife with withering guitars, drummer Flo Mounier’s relentless blastbeats and some of the grimmest vocals in death metal, it proved that not only were these French Canadians not yet ready for history’s dustbin, but they’re playing some of the most dynamic, frenetic music of their career. So while bands like Sunn 0))) and Boris have enjoyed mainstream recognition and crossover success, Cryptopsy have not. Because despite Once Was Not being a stunning comeback, it also happens to be a huge critical oversight.
[Philadelphia Weekly July 12–19]
Hot Chip vs. Xtina, Rihanna & Sean Paul in: 2006 Singles
Some favorites aka, what keeps me tethered to reality: