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Hallelujah The Hills, Deerhoof, time management

It seems like ever since I got my iPhone (installed the WordPress application), I haven’t had much to blog about. I am working, as usual (here’s a new Hallelujah The Hills EP review. I like this band but I’m still waiting for…something. I don’t know.

Hallelujah The Hills, Deerhoof, time management

It seems like ever since I got my iPhone (installed the WordPress application), I haven’t had much to blog about. I am working, as usual (here’s a new Hallelujah The Hills EP review. I like this band but I’m still waiting for…something. I don’t know. Their moment’s forthcoming).

On Paper Thin Walls, editors Chris, Kory and I recorded our own version of Deerhoof’s sheet music project. Writer Tom Mallon produced it! My Ableton Live was set wrong (still on DJ mode, which means it warped the beat a little bit), so it meant my keyboard track was almost 10 seconds too fast. Tom kindly recut it. I had never recorded anything to a track before on Ableton. I kind of loved it. I might have to do more of that soon.

That’s also gotten me thinking about projects and dividing up my time. I use GTD, I do a lot of checklists and time tracking. But I’m still wondering how I could better spend my time. I’m spending the rest of the month asking people I know how they read / write / curate shows and exhibits / get to shows so much and still exercize / make dinner / have time to answer questions from me.

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Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson, ninnyish noblemen boast in major

The only good anagram I could find for Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson was “ninnyish noblemen boast in major.” I didn’t talk about this with Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson, but I did talk to him about his LP Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson. The guy was awesome, actually: self-deprecating but super

Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson, ninnyish noblemen boast in major

The only good anagram I could find for Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson was “ninnyish noblemen boast in major.” I didn’t talk about this with Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson, but I did talk to him about his LP Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson. The guy was awesome, actually: self-deprecating but super confident, funny and full of stories. There was one I couldn’t include about his grandmother disappearing to follow a traveling tent revival. Or another about how he doesn’t own a computer, but does have a Blackberry. Sometimes talking to a nice guy can make that nice guy’s CD even better, and I don’t know if that’s a good way to form opinions about a record. Luckily, I had formed mine a month or so before.

Possibly the song of the year:
[audio:https://jessicasuarez.com/audio/buriedfed.mp3|titles=Buriedfed|artists=Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson]

I’ve also updated my work page with some stuff from Pitchfork, Paper and Paste—I realized I hadn’t put up anything since Sept 2007, which seems to imply I hadn’t worked since then. I most certainly have been working, and for places that don’t start with P, too.

Should I have a tumblr? I registered one a long, long time ago, but didn’t really update, and now it seems like everyone has one, especially people that write. I think that the work/stress of writing all day makes one-button photo/quote publishing extra appealing. And someone told me my blog was very ‘plain’ and ‘texty’ but! I like text, I haven’t gotten tired of text.

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I just want more of the same

Yesterday I paid the last $20 of my library fine. I didn’t have anything new to pick up since my fine stopped me from reserving books. I tried browsing at the New York Ottendorfer Library branch, an easy/difficult thing to do since their fiction section is entirely contained

I just want more of the same

Yesterday I paid the last $20 of my library fine. I didn’t have anything new to pick up since my fine stopped me from reserving books. I tried browsing at the New York Ottendorfer Library branch, an easy/difficult thing to do since their fiction section is entirely contained within a dozen small shelves. There were two Edith Wharton books, neither of which I wanted. No copies of “Confederacy of Dunces.” But I did noticed a large number of mystery novels (three shelves’ worth), books that no one reads but everyone reads. Mark mentioned a friend who used to proof(listen) mystery audiobooks. He’d check the audio against the book, feeling for certain the reader had misread, but more often it was a grammar/plot mistake in the book. He was given two days per audiobook. That’s the kind of quality control they put into mystery novels, and it makes sense. They’re obviously segregated by genre because readers care about the genre, the ingredients, more than they care who’s cooking.

My favorite example of this is the “The Cat Who” series. I guess it’s easy to make fun of the housewives this series is directed toward, the people who like mysteries and cats so much that they had to read about them together. This fan site for the author (Lilian Jackson-Braun, who is in her seventies and lives with her husband and two cats), doesn’t help: there are links to fan fiction, a broken message board, and ‘your daily horoscope.’ The author also has a link to a page about her ‘hubby,’ along with the dates he left the military and went to a WWF matchup.

I think being a fan necessarily means accepting that you’ll like someone or something regardless of diminishing quality, so I guess being a fan is necessarily lowbrow. I don’t think you can be a fan of a static thing: you can’t be a fan of a single TV episode, a single book, or film. You’ve got to be a fan of the author, series, characters, actor and then hope for the best, though quality always diminishes. Maybe it’s the lowbrow-ness that makes being a fan of something uncool, more than the fan-ness itself. Taste, an aspect of being cool, means discernment, fandom means no-discernment. You can’t qualify, you can’t say you like Weezer, but only the first two albums and maybe Make Believe, Simpsons but only the first five seasons, Star Wars but only the last three episodes. You’ve got to embrace it all.

On another note, the lady with the Lilian Jackson-Braun fansite also put up a Jim Carrey fan page. As someone who made her dad drive 10 people to the opening night of the Mask, who still has every word of Ace Ventura memorized, and who wrote Jim Carrey a fan letter every week for a year, I, uh, agree/approve. This has had its ups and downs: down, quite a bit, when The Majestic came out; back up for Eternal Sunshine, back down since.

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I have a track review on PTW, of a pretty bad Architecture In Helsinki track. It reminded me of the similar, but much better Scottish twee band Bearsuit. I’ve been meaning to occasionally post (legal!) MP3s I’ve been listening to, once in a while. Here’s one.

[audio:https://jessicasuarez.com/audio/bearsuit-itsuko_got_married.mp3]

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Diluting my person brand

I interviewed Michael Ian Black a few weeks ago for Paper Thin Walls. A few weeks later, my friend Phil sent me a link to Black’s blog. He had written a post about our conversation, during which I had taught him to post images on his website: To thank

Diluting my person brand

I interviewed Michael Ian Black a few weeks ago for Paper Thin Walls. A few weeks later, my friend Phil sent me a link to Black’s blog. He had written a post about our conversation, during which I had taught him to post images on his website:

To thank her, I wanted to put her picture up, but when I Googled “Jessica Suarez,” I got over four thousand hits. I would not have thought so many people with the surname “Suarez” would have thought to name their daughter “Jessica.” I wouldn’t have thought that at all. With so many Jessica Suarez’s to choose from, I had to narrow my favorites down to three. It’s possible – nay, likely – that none of these are MY Jessica Suarez. If not, I apologize. But not really.

He’s exaggerating, I think. I’m the highest Google result for my name, and because I decided years ago that silly forum/website/commenter names were just that, most of my accounts are under my real name and appear high in my search results. But he’s also right in that I’ve kept photos of myself off my Flickr and Myspace. This is partially because of Pitchfork, where people who were mad at my reviews tended to Google me, find my personal sites, and then make fun of the way I look. Once, I made fun of We Are Scientists on this site, and a response called me a tree monkey (I’m Filipino). When I worked for Forkcast I remember comments on Gorilla Vs. Bear that said I had slept with Ryan to get my job. I’m still surprised that the audience I write for (or, that I think I write for), skews liberal and educated, yet are so free and easy with racist and sexist comments. “That’s the internet,” etc., etc.

I am bringing this up now because I just bought another digital camera to replace my stolen one, updated my WordPress account, and renewed Flickr.