The Man Who Sold The World

I went to Ginza, a great all-you-can-eat sushi place on St-Denis St.! I usually don't like sushi pizza, but theirs was excellent. The Sakara roll was great too (I think I have that name right). In places like these, they usually offer food other than sushi. It isn't always good, but at Ginza, it was pretty great. The portions weren't too big, and they had cute little eggplant appetizers. Their beef sashimi was good too.

Help Myself (Nous Ne Faisons Que Passer)

I've just finished reading Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, and I am a bit puzzled by this book. The beginning is absolutely beautiful, but the party scene at the end is so boring. Perhaps it's meant to be that way. Anyway, it is really lovely to be walking among the streets of London at the beginning of the novel with all of the different characters, whose thoughts are all fascinating to follow. I found Rezia's character very touching, and I loved Peter Walsh and Septimus.

Projects

I recently finished watching the entirety of "The Wire" and I feel like I just have to write a blog post about that. "The Wire" is known for being one of the smartest TV series ever made, and it certainly is the smartest TV series I've ever watched, followed more or less closely by "Mad Men" and "Veronica Mars". (They're smart too, but a different kind of smart.) It is mainly about Baltimore's drug scene, and it could be considered a crime drama, but it is also about the various institutions that are part of a city. We're talking the media, the education system, the government, etc. We also get to realize that it isn't enough to know who the bad guys are: you need solid proof. But first and foremost, it's about every single person trying to fulfill his own particular needs, and the conflicts that can ensue. Since the series is about Baltimore's drug scene, the street lingo is very much present in every episode. At first, I didn't understand a word of what the characters were saying to each other, even with the subtitles, but I got used to it. I loved seasons one, three and four, and I only had a few problems with seasons two and five. Season two drew away from the black gangsters and focused on the people working at the port, and those people are mainly white. Seriously, I didn't care for the white folks, I wanted the black gangstas back. Season five was a bit too much, but it still broke my heart to think that it was the last season of "The Wire" I could ever get my hands on.

I loved many of the characters, and many of them infuriated me. There are a lot of characters, but if one were to point out one particular character on whom the series seemed to focus on, it would be Jimmy McNulty. McNulty is a cop and a rebel, and those two things don't necessarily fit together. I loved him as a rebel. In season four, he calmed down a little, and I loved watching that too. In season five, he went back to being the rebel I loved, but it wrenched my heart to see him drift away from his tranquil state, in which he was so happy. Bunk was always a great character, but I especially loved him in season five. Cedric Daniels is HOT. I liked Lester Freamon in season one, but he got more and more cocky as the seasons went on. I loved Bubbles, of course. Amongst the gangsters, I particularly loved Bodie, and Snoop was pretty scary. I loved the tension between Avon Barksdale and Stringer Bell. I know that all this talk about the characters doesn't mean anything to you, but see, I was so invested in "The Wire" that I don't care.

I saw one critic's quote in the back of the DVD sets that says it all: "Either you love 'The Wire' or you haven't seen it."

Way Down In The Hole

(These lists are in alphabetical order by authors' last names.)

Books I am buying this year:

Mansfield Park - Jane Austen

Hollywood - Charles Bukowski

The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky

Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

The Beautiful and the Damned - F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Last Tycoon - F. Scott Fitzgerald

A Long Way Down - Nick Hornby

The Lottery: And Other Stories - Shirley Jackson

The Subterraneans - Jack Kerouac

Reading Lolita in Teheran: A Memoir in Books - Azar Nafisi

The Jungle - Upton Sinclair

Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson

A Room of One's Own - Virginia Woolf

Orlando - Virginia Woolf

Books I am borrowing at the library sometime this year:

Tuesdays with Morrie - Mitch Albom

Catch-22 - Joseph Heller

Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (must finish that one)

If any of you remember the other lists of books I made at the beginning and in the summer of last year, you'll notice that a lot of the books in this list have already been mentioned previously. I really haven't read a lot of the books in those previous lists.

Summer Well

There you go, theoreo, something new to read :) You should write more often too! Anyway, this blog post will be about Interpol's new self-titled album. I haven't listened to it that much yet, but I find it excellent. In an article, the album was described as being "somewhere between the first and the second album", and that description is pretty accurate. For this album, Interpol went back to their independent label, having worked with Capitol for their third album. I personally liked Our Love to Admire a lot, but I can see how working with Matador provides better results for them. I already knew four of the songs on this album, i.e. the songs they played at their show: "Success", "Summer Well", "Lights", and "Barricade". I like "Summer Well" a lot, although it sounds a bit better live. "Lights" is a pretty intense song. At first, I thought the guitars on "Barricade" were a bit too much, but that song is growing on me now. "Always Malaise" has an awesome title. "All Of The Ways" is a slow and intense song. In "The Undoing", Paul sings in Spanish :) Throughout the album, Paul's voice remains as strong as always. It is pretty sexy to hear him curse in "Try It On" ;) I believe this album will remain for some time in my car!

Half Light II (No Celebration)

Arcade Fire’s latest album, The Suburbs, is sooooo good. It took me less time to appreciate this one than Neon Bible. In some ways, there seems to be a lot more going on in The Suburbs than in the last two albums. The tracks I like a lot are « Ready to Start », « Modern Man », « Half Light II (No Celebration) », « Deep Blue » and « We Used to Wait ». For once, I also like the tracks where Régine Chassagne is the main singer, i.e. « Empty Room » and « Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) ». The Suburbs is one of the two new releases that have been in heavy rotation in my car this summer. The other one is High Violet by The National, which came out at the beginning of the summer. It is pretty depressing for a summer album, but it is also incredibly good. Another CD which has been playing a lot in my car lately is Carla Bruni’s first CD, Quelqu’un m’a dit. Also depressing, but that is some really pretty music.

Lights

Wow, I saw Salt yesterday and it was amazing. Okay, maybe not amazing, but it was a good little action movie, and good action movies are always awesome. It's always a pleasure to see a crazy chick pull off insane Spiderman-like stunts. The movie's catchy tagline, "Who is Salt?", is very accurate: during the whole movie, the only question running through my head was, "Who the fuck is Salt?" Angelina Jolie is pretty scary in this role, you literally never know what she's going to do next. I'll leave you with a slight spoiler, i.e. the message of this movie: Do not fuck with a girl's man.