funnystrange.com

8/21/02

The Hermit from VTW is now appearing on a DJ Shadow album cover!


It's a CD single actually, for "You Can't Go Home Again" and a couple of other tracks from his new CD, Private Press. There's a collage on the front including several steel engravings, one of which is the Hermit from VTW.


Georg discovered it on the new releases shelf at the radio station. I took my camera so I could take a picture of it for the site, but unfortunately the music staff had stickered right over the image. The nerve! Actually they have to put the sticker somewhere, and the art is frankly unremarkable, except of course for having my Hermit in it. So I don't blame them for stickering over it.


So anyway, I couldn't get a photo of the actual CD cover, so I downloaded the picture from Amazon instead. It's pretty cool whenever I see one of the images from VTW show up someplace else. Especially something like a DJ Shadow album. Not that Shadow himself did the artwork for the cover, but still.


Speaking of which, Private Press was on the XDU playlist a couple of months ago and it's really good. I highly recommend it if you like that sort of thing.


We rented Ghost World last night. Now that I've finally seen it, I can hardly believe I waited so long. The realism of the two girls was amazing. They reminded me a lot of myself, actually. I spent a couple of aimless summers during college just like that. Of course I wasn't as hip, as well-dressed, as pretty, or as constantly, archly funny as they were (then again I didn't have a screenwriter putting words in my mouth or a production designer decorating my room and so forth). But the cynicism, the ironic distance from everything, the lack of purpose, flailing around trying to find an identity, having fun all the time but also wondering what was the point of it all, that rang so true. It's so rare to see a movie in which the characters sound like real people.

1 Comments

Steve Garrison said:

Re: Ghost World

It's a minor masterpiece, to be sure. Let me recommend Teri Gross' Fresh Air interview with filmmaker Zwigoff and cartoonist Clowes, archived at: http://freshair.npr.org/dayFA.cfm?todayDate=archive

...and go to Sept 6, 2001.


This was the interview that first interested me in the movie... typically brilliant Teri Gross stuff... and both of the principals are articulate and funny (the stories about 'pitching' the film to obtuse Hollywood-types are hilarious... as well as cautionary).


Ordered the Deck moments ago via PayPal (and listened to a bit of what I assume was Sara's show this morning... I loved it! I wish I could have loaned you one of my Garland Jeffreys recordings for the occasion, though). Eagerly await its arrival!


Cheers

Steve

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