Lately I’ve been experiencing a renaissance of music, a rebirth in my quest for harmonious nirvana. I’ve discovered several new bands lately that I really like. Among them are a Japanese band called Ogre You Asshole. I recently “acquired” their latest album, フォグランプ. I have no clue what that means in English. I don’t even know how to pronounce it. I don’t listen to non-English music much, because I like to be able to hear and ponder lyrics in the music to which I listen, but every now and then I can get into a band that effectively uses voice as an instrument. I can’t understand a thing in フォグランプ—I don’t even know the titles of the any of the songs, because they’re all in Japanese, too—but the music is beautiful and has an almost Radiohead-like quality to it.

Yesterday I was listening to The Smashing Pumpkin’s Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, and I realized just how much my musical tastes have matured over the years. Back in high school, I liked the classic songs from Mellon Collie—“Zero” and “Bullet with Butterfly Wings”, and of course “Fuck You (An Ode to No One)” when I was feeling angsty—but (unfortunately) I rarely listened to most of the other tracks on the album; I basically ignored the airy, melodic ones, because they just weren’t heavy enough for me back then. But after giving the entire two-disc album another listen yesterday, I surprised myself by liking a lot more of the non-standard tracks that I’d never listened to much before. Belatedly I realized just how…musical many of those songs are.

I’ve also listened to the French alt-rock band Phoenix’s latest album, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, and I am in love with it. Great album, both from a musical perspective and a technical perspective (it’s mixed so well it sounds like a delicious, velvety cake, in other words). And the bassist uses an awesome Fender Mustang Bass, at least when playing live, so I can really get behind this band. I’ll have to check out their other stuff.

The most interesting find as of late, though, is the eponymous album by a band called Starfucker. These guys are so obscure they don’t even have a Wikipedia article (in fact, I can’t even find a website). They’re an interesting electronic rock band that is somehow associated with Phoenix. Starfucker sounds like another band I’ve heard recently; I want to say “MGMT”, but I don’t think that’s right. At any rate, they’re pretty good.

The only problem with Starfucker is the name. Bands have to think ahead: what if they get really big, so big that they headline tours in the United States? You can’t appear on American TV with the word “fuck” in your name. MTV won’t cover them. Letterman won’t let them on his set. If anyone in the media does cover them, they’re going to have to censor the name. If they become famous, Starfucker is destined to go down in history as Starf*cker, and that’s just lame.

I’ve been reading Tom Wolfe’s I Am Charlotte Simmons for the past month or so. At first, I didn’t like the novel that much. I felt that Tom Wolfe’s dialogue was too forced, and his characters’ interactions didn’t feel authentic to me. I also felt that he used too many ellipses in his prose. This may be an attempt to ironically mimic the communication patterns of young adults, but like his attempt at “contemporary” dialogue, I found his style to be annoying. (Perversely, it made me want to read more Tom Wolfe, to see if this is his usual style.) I also found his prose to be boring. His stock descriptions and clichés did nothing to enhance the descriptions of his settings, characters, and interactions. I felt that a writer as mature as Wolfe should be able to paint a better picture with his words. It seemed like he was putting too much effort into his writing, and yet, at the same time, not quite enough. But mostly I didn’t like his characters. The ones that weren’t stock and one-dimensional were either conniving, abhorrent human beings, or pathetic weaklings. Charlotte was the only character I came close to liking, despite her whininess, but instead of liking her, I just pitied her for her naïveté.

I’m only on Chapter 12 (yes, I’m a slow reader), but my opinion has softened, and I’m really getting absorbed into the book. I realized that it’s a somewhat non-traditional novel, and the prose is intended to read more like a journalistic piece, less like a story. Wolfe interviewed a lot of college students for this book, and even “embedded” himself at a frat party for “research purposes” (I wonder if anyone noticed the old guy with the white suit and pastel silk handkerchief?). His characters are intentional stereotypes; in that sense, they're really caricatures, lenses through which we can examine various subcultures of American university students. But what I like most is Wolfe’s focus on relationships, and his critique of the hook-up culture of American colleges.

I enjoyed the chapter featuring Charlotte’s first experience at a frat party. I actually liked how she was all too quick to compromise her principles, just to get attention from a boy at a party. I loved the next section even more, when Charlotte’s opinion of hooking up changed once she saw the attention she got from other girls merely by being with a popular boy. These scenes provide a new perspective on the stereotypical depictions of relationships in mass media. Human relationships fascinate me, but the media depictions of them are usually one-dimensional, inaccurate portrayals of reality.

During college, a lot of pressure is placed on guys to hook up with as many (different) girls as possible; if you’re not having a lot of casual sex, your machismo suffers. For guys who aren’t interested simply in hooking up, there’s a lot of psychological stress to conform to the media’s depiction of the classic college male anyway. Wolfe hasn’t explicitly depicted this aspect of college romance in Charlotte Simmons yet, but I hope he’s getting there. (He does talk a lot about the connection between masculinity and athletics, which is interesting as well.)

I’m interested in seeing where Wolfe goes with these situations. I’m hoping he addresses the issue of fidelity in relationships. I can’t stand the depiction of sexual faithfulness in most books, movies, and TV shows. It’s stereotypical to depict men as the ones who generally cheat on their partners, but women cheat, too, even though that’s rarely shown in the mass media.

Now that I’ve gotten farther into the novel, I am indeed enjoying Charlotte Simmons. It gives an honest, fair, and enlightening look at the nature of relationships in college, and is especially engaging for a recent college graduate like myself.

I saw a couple of little girls playing the new The Beatles: Rock Band at Best Buy today. After watching for a few minutes, I decided that I’d never let my kids play The Beatles: Rock Band. Those girls weren’t old enough. The game is simply too psychedelic.

I’ve never dropped acid, and I don’t plan to, but occasionally I find myself in a situation that makes me think, “Hey, maybe LSD isn’t so bad. Maybe it’s not as dangerous as they say. Maybe I should give it a shot.” I fear that playing The Beatles: Rock Band might put me over the edge, because I had that strange impulse to drop some acid just from watching it for a few minutes. The game is really trippy.

Before I found myself at Best Buy, I’d been browsing the stacks at Borders. Maybe Rock Band nearly put me over the edge because, having read a few excerpts of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, I was already in an acid-friendly mode.

(On an unrelated note, I can’t help but note that this is a short post without much substance. Maybe I finally found a use for Twitter.)

Writers have an expression: kill your darlings. In a nutshell, this maxim encourages writers to eliminate story elements that don’t contribute to the central idea of the work. Even if you’re enamored with a interesting character, provocative idea, or witty turn of phrase, you can’t be afraid to cut material that doesn’t contribute to the piece.

Over the years, Monkey Robot has had a number of darlings. Before I redesigned the site last spring, I’d kept the same overall layout since Monkey Robot’s inception in 2004. In fact, I was so in love with the layout that all of my website designs ended up looking, more or less, like Monkey Robot. Part of the reason for the great redesign(s) of last spring was to break away from that look and try something new.

Likewise, the Person of the Week section was another darling I kept around, even though it hadn’t been updated in over three years (and hadn’t seen regular updates since 2004). So I let it go. Admittedly, it was a bit hard. Monkey Robot’s Person of the Week made me a minor celebrity at my high school, and was largely responsible for the site’s initial popularity. Classmates used to log on every week to see who had won the “prestigious” award. Beyond that, I like to think it was a showcase for some of my wittier writings. Whether adulatory or ironic, the site was an homage to those around me. But truth be told, I hadn’t had a passion for that aspect of the site since I graduated from high school, and the Person of the Week section made Monkey Robot feel a bit dated. It may seem crazy to remove one of the more popular aspects of Monkey Robot, but the Person of the Week was well past its expiration date.

Even so, I’ll miss the Person of the Week. Next time you’re drinking, pour out a beer for ol’ POTW.

Over lunch, I was discussing some trivial subject or another with my girlfriend Cate. The exact topic of the conversation has been lost to the sands of time, but naturally I had strong feelings about it. (Generally, the intensity of my feelings about a given issue is the inverse of the importance of it.) I summed up the discussion by saying, “Now I’m going to go blog about this, as if my opinion on the matter was valuable enough to publish on the Internet.” Cate looked at me from over the rim of her mug and said, “I think everyone’s opinion is valuable enough to publish on the Internet.”

There are two ways to interpret her statement. The way she intended, I think, was “Everyone’s opinion is equally valid and important.” But I interpreted it as, “The Internet is a cesspool, so your thoughts are at least as palatable as the shit already lining the bottom of it.” And I thought that was a pretty apt way to sum up this blog, and online self-publishing in general. And especially Twitter.