This very, very hilarious interview with Kristin Hersh discusses the recent recording sessions for a new Throwing Muses record — the first in almost ten years. “It’s EPIC,” said Hersh: “It’s the record that’s going to kill us.” In this brave new transitional era, since Hersh has gone to a fan-based model, there’s no more artificial structure placed on the making and release of music: “There’s no one to tell us what to do anymore, so release schedules have nothing to do with anything except for the right time for the listeners and the right time for the band…. I like that everything blew up, even though we had to lose a lot of good soldiers in the process, even though I had to starve in the process. You lose good men in revolutions, and you lose them first. We’re still in that phase, and yet, there’s this beautiful underground railroad kicking in.”

The future is now: “Last year while writing about students entering their first year of college I made an interesting observation: these newly commissioned freshman don’t use wristwatches. In fact, the wristwatch is so alien to this group of late teens, that even the mere action of pointing to a wrist to ask someone the time is akin to speaking an unfamiliar foreign language. (They use mobile phones and laptops to tell the time.)”

Oh, Mexico! It’s “a land so rich in slang and wordplay (much of it salty but freely used) that a newcomer armed with book-learned Spanish might feel he had studied for the wrong test.” HAHA RIGHT? UNLIKE FRANCE OR RUSSIA OR CHINA. (Whoops, sorry.) Anyway! Thus begins what is a phenomenally dim little piece in the Los Angeles Times this week. Salty! Freely used! Unlike in New York City or London, where in our fine English language we never speak in slang. (What would that trashy Charles Dickens make of this? Hell, what would Evelyn Waugh say?) Here’s the deal: nearly all other Spanish-speaking people hate both Mexican common words and slang, and the sounds of Mexican Spanish itself. They think it’s coarse and low-class talk, and they will tell you to your face straight-up that your Spanish sounds “gross” to their refined, classist ears. And English-speaking people don’t much like it either, though they’re largely deaf to the connotations — they just hear it as servant-talk, or as cartoon Mexican babbling. So, neato, here is this look at The Wacky World of How Them There Mexicans Talk, from America’s saddest newspaper, which by the way, is based in a Spanish-speaking town, not that you could tell from this. But don’t worry, white people! There’s only 112 million Mexicans in Mexico, and 30 million in the U.S. I’m sure you’ll get used to the coarse and degrading sounds of Mexico, vato.

This seems like something you might want to jump on: “In September of 2006, the Wordless Music series presented its first concert at the 250-capacity Good Shepherd Faith Church on West 66th Street in New York City. Five years later, we are slightly shocked and humbled to announce the start of our 5th anniversary season with a true musical great: Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel, performing his first U.S. live shows since 1998, and in two of the country’s great acoustical treasures: on Saturday, September 10, at the 1,050-capacity Jordan Hall at New England Conservatory in Boston; and on Friday, September 9, at an historic 1,150-capacity venue to be announced next week. Tickets for these concerts will be $35 and open to audience members of all ages. A small number of tickets for the Jordan Hall concert go on presale next Friday, February 25 at 10am by phone, online, and (with no service charges) at the Jordan Hall box office; the remaining Jordan Hall tickets will be sold at the same outlets starting at 10am on Saturday, February 26. Ticket info for September 9’s concert will be disclosed….imminently.”

In honor of Amy Jean Porter’s newest print, just now available at 20×200, here are some new shivery late mid-winter drawings!

Amy Jean Porter really likes monkeys! (There are also some remaining of her last print!)

The critic, who writes only about others, deems art about the making of art “solipsistic” and says it’s not tough work. How would he know?Tue Feb 15 03:18:44 via web

Richard Brody
tnyfrontrow

Sometimes I compulsively follow people on Twitter even when I rarely have any idea what they’re talking about! You get one-half of various arcane conversations, some meditations on bagels and a lot of stuff about French films you haven’t seen. Hence, Richard Brody, the Goings On movies editor of the New Yorker. Perhaps you remember Brody best for his mini-pan of Rush Hour 3? (“This is filmmaking by the yard, but Ratner perks up near the end and delivers a vertigo-inducing chase through the latticework of the Eiffel Tower. Only the pounding music and sound effects might keep a viewer awake to that point; such formulaic fare cries out for a director with Quentin Tarantino’s studious flair.”) Well perhaps not. More likely you know his very attentive blogging at the New Yorker. But his Twitter! It’s sort of like an oddly upper-crust sitcom, one that’s set in this other New York, and it might be a better town than ours? He is constantly yelling at Glenn Kenny’s Twitter (even while calling Kenny’s blog “terrific”). I like to think of Brody and the rest of them all shuffling from the Sony screening room to the Magno, dodging Rex Reed and muttering all the while about Truffaut. It’s so irritating and enjoyable! He is like the crazy uncle I never had.

@ExtAngel You’re not sure what anyone has nailed, since you haven’t seen the film. But you’re busy reviewing it anyway.Sun Feb 13 18:48:47 via web

Richard Brody
tnyfrontrow

@ExtAngel Yes — and worse, the immediacy on Twitter, so that a discussion goes from a sneer to a scream in mere seconds.Fri Jan 21 19:29:59 via web

Richard Brody
tnyfrontrow

Plus coworker banter!

@nancysfranklin @laurenzcollins I saw bundles of actors’ gestures and a director’s pride in his sympathy for ordinary people.Wed Jan 19 05:32:37 via web

Richard Brody
tnyfrontrow

I only follow this Twitter because I am a silly and unserious person and I enjoy being reminded of that fact.

Previously

The folks at Next Media Animation pose an important question: Have we become a society of inconsiderate voyeurs? While the evidence in the proposition’s favor may seem incontrovertible, I would suggest that we have always been inconsiderate voyeurs. We just have more impressive technology now with which to broadcast our inconsiderate voyeurism to our fellow inconsiderate voyeurs.

“If friends or family comment on your anger, or you think you need to tell someone how to walk — however politely — you may have a problem,” according to psychology professor Leon James, a scientist studying the phenomenon of “sidewalk rage,” who has “developed a Pedestrian Aggressiveness Syndrome Scale to map out how people express their fury. At its most extreme, sidewalk rage can signal a psychiatric condition known as “intermittent explosive disorder,” researchers say.” Step lively out there, people.

Please be forewarned that this segment ends with the line, “It’s a purr-fect night for a heist.” Other than that it is 2 minutes of pure American local news delight.

I am unfamiliar with the oeuvre of Jonny Corndawg, but Wikipedia informs me that he is “an American artist, musician and singer-songwriter,” which is all I need to know, considering that this is a song about bears. It has an early Robbie Fulks-ish vibe. More importantly, it is about bears. Enjoy.