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back Back from two days of mind-expanding drone festival action, two days of on-the-road hijinxs with Harvey P., and five days in Houston, Texas with K. and a rotating cast of guest stars. Needless to say, I emerged from the far end of it having been pummeled by enough good times to have rendered me nearly insensate. Some highlights, ordered in rough chronology, include: attempting to summarize all of Seasons Two and Three of Lost to Harvey, who indulged this act on my part with a preternatural patience; exploring an abandoned motel in downstate Illinois; listening to the generative music produced by pan-African automated whirligigs designed by polymath George Lewis (currently on display at Houston's Contemporary Art Museum in conjunction with this exhibit); getting caught in torrential rain with old-school compatriots Jon and Sharon; enjoying salmon grill-out with the whole Court of Charleston group; laughing nearly to the point of internal rupture at a story K. told about attempting, when quite young, to make a steak tatare. Then there was the fest. Saw some fantastic music, felt proud of my own performance as part of The Number None quartet formation, took a handful of decent photos—these are the good things. The bad thing is: we lost money on it, which has resulted in some lingering post-fest complications best left unrecounted here. Aside from fest music, I've also consumed some other media in the last week, including the Transformers movie and the first two Harry Potter novels, which I'd not read before. Both were surprising: I didn't expect the Transformers movie to be as funny as it is, and I didn't expect the Harry Potter books to be essentially mysteries, complete with clues, red herrings, and big reveals. So many people talk about Harry Potter as a big fantasy epic, but I found them—at least these first two—to be much closer to the tradition of "boy detective"-type novels, set in a fantasy milieu. In any case, they are quite charming, and the Transformers movie was worth my $9.50, even though it adds yet another branch to the messy thicket of Transformers continuity. Has anybody out there read The Boy Detective Fails? Labels: book_commentary, media commentary, personal

Monday, July 09, 2007 1:16 PM   Comments: Post a Comment