The litter in littérateur. » Music

My favorite things of 2010

Ricky — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 07:47:14 +0000

At the end of 2009 I put together a quick list of things I liked from the year. Earlier in December some friends asked if I would be making a similar list this year. And indeed, I have made one, and it is more ambitious than last year’s in its scope, volume, and design. Check it out here.

Inevitably, there are some things that I would like to mention that I liked during the year but, for one reason or another, didn’t quite make the list. Here are the honorable mentions:

Henri Cartier-Bresson at the MoMA — I’ve only gotten a quick preview of this show, but it’s very promising, and I can’t wait to take the time to really take it in. Without Bresson, the sort of photography I practice wouldn’t even be possible, so I’m looking forward to the chance to see so many of his prints in person.

Audrey Tautou — I love her acting, her films, her style, and the fact that she uses a Leica to photograph people she meets.

Difficulty — This one really should have been on the list, but I chose to write it into a couple other entries. I feel like we’ve become less and less patient when it comes to difficult things—people, art, technology, and work. But one of the things I learned in my life as a reader is that difficulty often conceals great value. And that’s something I remembered in 2010. Difficulty is something to engage with, not run away from, because the rewards for doing so can be so great. It’s closely related to insistent compassion and creating possibilities, which both made the list. You can find someone difficult to know and just throw your hands up and walk away or you can insistently try to know them because, perhaps, their worth will justify their difficulty. You can leave Gaddis and Proust and Foster Wallace and Pynchon on the shelf because their books are too long and confusing or you can take the time to read them and, perhaps, find yourself changed. And, ah ha, wouldn’t that be worth any level of difficulty?

Yanidel — The street photographer Yanick Delafoge calls himself Yanidel, and his post-processing techniques produce a look that it utterly unique and European and brilliant. I especially enjoy his photographs from Paris.

Cosi on rue de Seine in Paris — In April I returned here for the first time in nearly nine years. It still serves the best sandwiches in the world.

Ken Griffey, Jr. — He was the hottest minor league prospect in baseball at the time when I really became fanatical about the sport, and I followed his entire career until it ended this summer. His swing was beautiful, and he should go down as the greatest player of his generation. I got to see him play in the 2007 All-Star game when he started in the same outfield as Barry Bonds in San Francisco, something I’ll never forget.

Subjective Time — This is the simple but not often cited concept of how we experience time subjectively in relation to our age. It’s no secret that time seems to pass faster as we get older, but it’s not commonly known that this concept has been scientifically studied and verified. In fact, there’s even an equation that describes one’s perception of time based on her age. Given current average life expectancies in the Unites States, we feel like we’ve lived half of our lives before the age of 20. Twenty is the subjective halfway point of our lives. It’s no wonder that it seems like such a formative age!

Concord, Massachusetts — Walden Pond, Mount Misery, Sleepy Hollow, and ridiculously large servings of ice cream—and only a 30-minute drive from Cambridge!

Love and Its Opposite by Tracey Thorn — That no one else writes songs about the disappointments of middle age makes this a unique album. That Tracey Thorn does so with brilliance and nuance makes it spectacular.

Printing Photos — So much better than storing them in the “cloud.”

Generation Why? by Zadie Smith — This is one of the better things that has been written about online culture, i.e. what the Internet has done to our culture.

J.D. Salinger — Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.

Don’t forget to read the final list. Click on the images to reveal the descriptions. And click on the Away arrow to open the page for a random favorite.

My favorite iPhone and iPod Touch apps I’ve been playing around with these devices for most of...
My favorite things of 2009 Here’s a list of things from 2009 that I particularly...
Simmons/Gladwell on ESPN.com Apparently, I’m the last person to read this conversation between...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Because the Night

Ricky — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 20:35:41 +0000

All these years, I’ve assumed that Patti Smith wrote “Because the Night”—that is, until I was listening to Springsteen’s The Promise, yesterday. It turns out that Bruce started writing the song, and Smith finished it.

NLCS Notes: Why did Jimmy Rollins not steal second last night? When Brian Wilson struck out Ryan Howard to end the...
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-03-06 What a comeback by Finland in the Bronze Medal...
I laugh more often now I attended two shows last week worth mentioned. The first...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Songs from childhood

Ricky — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 18:18:51 +0000

I’ve been listening a lot to Arcade Fire’s record The Suburbs this weekend, and I’m reminded of Flannery O’Connor’s line that seems entirely applicable to the Canadian band: “Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.” Whoever picked one of their songs for the Where the Wild Things Are trailer could not have done better.

So: is Google a good thing? John Lanchester asks, “Is Google a good thing?” in the...
I laugh more often now I attended two shows last week worth mentioned. The first...
Palo Alto Weekly: Kepler’s revival aids Katrina schools The Palo Alto Weekly reports that the winners of last...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Listen to Tracey Thorn’s new album, “Love and Its Opposite”

Ricky — Sat, 15 May 2010 22:14:40 +0000

This new record from Tracey Thorn will be replacing Katell Keineg’s At the Mermaid Parade in my stereo for at least the next week. Click here to order a copy. Or click here to hear an interview with Thorn on NPR. I was thrilled to see Sasha Frere-Jones’ review of the album in this week’s New Yorker and a gardening column by Thorn herself on a blog called Caught by the River.

Hear Tracey Thorn’s “Oh, the Divorces!” from “Love and Its Opposite” More than, perhaps, any other songwriter, I’ve found Tracey...
The New Yorker’s Arts Issue Earlier this week, I had lunch with New Yorker writer...
Listen to Bon Iver at the New Yorker Festival, or how bad is the iPhone’s microphone? I saw Sasha Frere-Jones interview Justin Vernon of Bon...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Hear Tracey Thorn’s “Oh, the Divorces!” from “Love and Its Opposite”

Ricky — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:59:41 +0000

More than, perhaps, any other songwriter, I’ve found Tracey Thorn’s songs from the past three decades to be consistently evocative. Every album has something that ignites my memory or feeling, and her new one is no exception. Love and Its Opposite is due in May, and its first track, “Oh, the Divorces!” isn’t a pop song; it’s a panorama of adulthood’s disappointment. Click here to download it as an MP3.

Tracey Thorn / ‘Oh, The Divorces!’ by buzzinfly

Listen to Tracey Thorn’s new album, “Love and Its Opposite” This new record from Tracey Thorn will be replacing Katell...
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-03-13 Is there a translated work of literature that readers...
Listen to new Radiohead song, “Harry Patch (In Memory of)” Radiohead has a new song, “Harry Patch (In Memory of),”...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Listen to the new K’s Choice single “Come Live the Life”

Ricky — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 04:00:39 +0000

One of my favorite albums, which I discovered by chance at FNAC ten years ago, is Almost Happy by K’s Choice. The brother and sister duo broke up and is now back together, releasing their first album since. It’s called Echo Mountain and its first single is called “Come Life the Life.” I heard the band’s lead singer, Sarah Bettens, perform it live on Tuesday in San Francisco. I’ll be posting more about her show shortly. For now, enjoy the new single:

Sarah Bettens concert, or six years ago in France In the fall of 2000, while shopping at FNAC in...
Adam Gopnik on Canada’s gold I’ll be writing about Canada’s hockey victory at the Olympics...
I laugh more often now I attended two shows last week worth mentioned. The first...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Why the iPad buzz doesn’t matter

Ricky — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:29:03 +0000

A lot of people are saying a lot of things about the iPad. It’s revolutionary! It’s too compromised to be useful! It lacks important features like a phone, multitasking, camera, Flash support, etc. What’s certain to me is that the reactions—pro and con—are pretty much meaningless right now. I was trying to think last night about previous Apple product launches and how I felt about them. As I recall, there have been two Apple products in the past ten years that, when introduced, immediately prompted me to say, I want that! One was the Titanium PowerBook in at MacWorld in 2001 and the other was the iPod with video in 2005. Both products were updates to existing product lines. In the case of the PowerBook, it added a design unlike any other that I had seen before. In the case of the iPod, I thought that video would be a great feature that was worth waiting for. (Everyone knew it was coming once Apple had introduced the iPod Photo.) But here’s the thing, I’ve ended up not using the video feature at all during the past four years, really. I watched one movie on a plane once, and that was it. It wasn’t until I got an iPod Touch with a larger screen and better battery life that I really bothered to use an iPod to watch video.

The greater point here is that no one disputes that the iPod and iPhone were both game-changers—products that people now love and that redefined Apple as a company and a brand. I can safely say that when they launched, I didn’t want either one. I didn’t have anywhere close to enough of my music in MP3 format to make the iPod useful, and it was expensive too! The iPhone was even more expensive when it launched, and I remember thinking that there was no way I would get one because it would never handle email as well as my BlackBerry did. Of course, I did eventually get one, and it still doesn’t handle email as well as my five-year-old BlackBerry. But I don’t care because it does so many other things that I value. I can read the newspaper—several newspapers—in formats that are actually useable! I can listen to Internet radio. I can listen to live baseball games. I can listen to NPR on demand. I can browse the web. I can read stories from the web that I started reading on my laptop. In short, I can do a lot of things that I either didn’t know I wanted to do or whose value wasn’t properly contextualized for me until I actually had and lived with the device for a while.

I’m not saying that the iPad will succeed, but I am suggesting that the factors by which people are predicting its success or failure are, more than likely, incorrect because they are captive to our previous experiences. Who knows that developers will come up with for the device? Who knows what features a second or third generation update might add? Who even knows what it’s like to live with an iPad in your bag or on your desk for even a week? If anyone can take a product for which I feel I had no need and make it desirable, it’s Steve Jobs and Apple. As usual, I’ll be rooting for them.

Related articles by Zemanta

@ iPad Launch: First Impressions Leave Us Wondering How Do You Hold It? (paidcontent.org)
Watching Kindle, iPad and e-Readers? Openness is Key (poynter.org)
NYT: The Apple Tablet’s Got 3G and iPhone Apps Still Work [Rumor] (gizmodo.com)
Apple iPad Just Tried To Assassinate Laptops [Apple] (i.gizmodo.com)
10 things missing from the iPad (cnn.com)

Reactions to the iPad Adam Gopnik and other New Yorker staffers responded to Apple’s...
My favorite things of 2009 Here’s a list of things from 2009 that I particularly...
How to get AppleCare cheap? The answer is eBay. Like many but not enough people, I understand that extended...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Reactions to the iPad

Ricky — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 04:20:50 +0000

Adam Gopnik and other New Yorker staffers responded to Apple’s iPad announcement.

Why the iPad buzz doesn’t matter A lot of people are saying a lot of...
The New Yorker digital edition is already a disappointment I spent two hours yesterday waiting in line, unsuccessfully,...
My favorite things of 2009 Here’s a list of things from 2009 that I particularly...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Joseph Arthur at Rickshaw Stop or the GF1 and concert photography

Ricky — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 03:52:07 +0000

I took my GF1 to a show by Joseph Arthur earlier this week, and although the noise at 1600 ISO is considerably higher than that of any dSLR, it held up reasonably well. I also tested out Panasonic’s EVF live viewfinder for the first time. Unfortunately, it is small, low resolution, and not particularly good. However, it was better than having the huge LCD on the back of my camera lit up in a dark venue. Click to enlarge the images below.

Modified Panasonic DMC-GF1 firmware for 1920×1280 video Here’s a modified version of the GF1 firmware that allows...
Memories of Kepler’s and Weekend Photos People from all over have been sending in their memories...
Sarah Bettens concert, or six years ago in France In the fall of 2000, while shopping at FNAC in...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

My favorite things of 2009

Ricky — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 08:23:02 +0000

Here’s a list of things from 2009 that I particularly liked. The list has no order to it. And so:

Leica M9 — A full-frame camera that not only is not an intimidating SLR but also comes from the greatest line of cameras—the Leica M series—but is also a gorgeous rangefinder, but also gives you access to the best glass in the world. In short, it’s my dream camera—the one that leaves me short of breath and utterly destroys my syntax when I attempt to write about it.

New York Yankees — There’s something about this team that I really liked more than any Yankee team since the 2001 group that lost the World Series to the Diamondbacks. Teixera, Sabathia, Damon, Matsui, Melky, Burnett, a beautiful new stadium, and the Core Four! What fun they made October and November.

Albert Stash — A laptop bag with a handle that you can actually use to carry it for long periods of time—score!

A Gate at the Stairs — Lorrie Moore’s first novel in I don’t know how long is ambitious and acutely observed and flawed and wonderful. It made me relive, for the first time in years, one of the most intensely felt periods of my life. It reminded me what it felt like then. Can I ask any more of a novel, of a work of art?

Changing My Mind — Many of the essays in this collection by Zadie Smith have appeared in the New York Review, the Guardian, and the New Yorker, but reading them in sequence gives you a greater appreciation for the intellect and wit behind them. Smith’s new essay on David Foster Wallace alone is worth the price of admission.

Too Big to Fail — Andrew Ross Sorkin set out to write a book structured like the film Crash and as thrilling as the business classic Barbarians at the Gate. I haven’t seen Crash, but his book is every bit as thrilling as Barbarians and full of choice quotes and anecdotes from the people at the top of the financial world.

Hiroshi Sugimoto at Gagosian Gallery — I walked across town in nine inches of snow to see this show. Was it worth it? Absolutely.

Sag Harbor — Colson Whitehead’s latest novel should be read on summer evenings on Long Island. Funny and nostalgic with language that is full of vitality and of the 1980s, its effect on me was similar to that of Lorrie Moore’s book, but the world it gave me access to was entirely imaginary—Whitehead’s not mine—and altogether enjoyable. Dag!

Lamy Noto — Okay, so this pen really came out in 2008, but I didn’t see it anywhere in the U.S. until the summer of 2009. A well-designed Lamy for $10? Yes, please.

Dehumanized — Mark Slouka’s essay in the September issue of Harper’s was, perhaps, the most refreshing thing I read all year—someone standing up, for all the right reasons, to the wrongheaded bias toward math and science (and away from the humanities) that has come to pervade everyplace from the university to the corporation to the op-ed page of the New York Times.

Ellipse — Imogen Heap’s first album in four years is awesome and her live show is even more awesome. The leadoff track on Ellipse, “First Train Home,” was my favorite song of the year, and I challenge you to not like it.

iPhone 3GS — I’m still using the original 2g version of the iPhone, but this year’s update brings more storage, video capability, and faster speeds. It’s great to have a product that delivers both Apple’s design sense and a large library of applications. (The Macs I’ve used for the past 15 years have always delivered the former but never the latter.) Listening to baseball games wherever I am? Check. NPR shows on demand? Check. The New York Times in a format that’s easier to browse than NYTimes.com? Double check. Now, if only it was available on a network other than AT&T.

Panasonic GF-1 — It’s no M9, but it’s sort of a poor man’s, i.e. my, rangefinder. When paired with Panasonic’s 20mm f/1.7 pancake lens, it’s the closest thing to a great compact camera that I’ve ever used. See sample photos from others here.

Unibody MacBook Pros — These things look solid!

Range — Was this San Francisco restaurant new in 2009? I don’t know, but it’s good.

The President — Our country got a new one in January, and it was a glorious moment. The man can play basketball and speak and write in complete sentences, and he seems to have a genuine intellect and conscience and sense of ambivalence.

San Francisco Panorama — A very well-done one-time newspaper for a city that has no good regular publication.

Economic Recovery — The Dow and I are both lower than we once were, but we’re certainly better off than we were a year ago.

Cape Cod — I had never been before this year and now I hope that there won’t be a year when I don’t go there.

Empire State of Mind — Maybe this isn’t a new anthem for New York but Jay-Z’s new single is certainly fun. Sinatra needs a break now and then, anyway.

Some things that I haven’t yet gotten around to that came out this year but that I think I might like when I do: The Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter, Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann, Wild Things by Dave Eggers and Where the Wild Things Are by Dave Eggers and Spike Jonze, and Wes Anderson’s film adaptation of the Fantastic Mr. Fox.

My favorite things of 2010 At the end of 2009 I put together a...
My favorite iPhone and iPod Touch apps I’ve been playing around with these devices for most of...
Why the iPad buzz doesn’t matter A lot of people are saying a lot of...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.