Twittering the Symphony

Carr, currently installed somewhere deep in SE Portland, is drumming up for us a Summer 08 End Hits Classical package, listing the MUST HEAR tunes the end of our Northwestern Season.  [Although currently we're pretty sure he's somewhere hell out in Hillsboro eating sushi with none other than frequent Daily Miltonian contributer Matthew K.] Temporarily lifting our links ban, we’ll give you an old list by Alex Ross, to get you started on your Final Summer Classical Mix.  That’s Alex Ross, the New Yorker critic, not the comic book guy, for those of you keeping score at home.

We don’t have ours handy right now, but we could use all your Wii Friend codes.  Truth be told, we have not completely figured the whole thing out — you give us one code to get your Mii in our little Mii Parade thingy and then separate codes for each game?  We have Mario Kart and Smash Bros, for the record.  Anyhow, codes, we need ‘em.  Let’s play.

New Yorker Style issue came in the mail yesterday.  Not really into that one, sorry.  Besides some really beautiful Richard Avedon photos from way back when, there just wasn’t anything in the thing that caught our attention.  Although hey: Dev B. and Natalie Portman??!?  ITEM?  Yikes.  Any Miltonians who find themselves wandering around the West Side tonight are more than welcome to contact our Offices, where you will find us deep into 1.) Mario Kart Wii 2.) “Deconstructing Harry”, and 3.) Ren & Stimpy.  Refreshments will include sparkling water and the Eveline St. Special.  Bring Good, leave Better.

Perfect From Now On

Labor Day Weekend is here, kicking off the Coda Chapter for Your Summer 2008: Best Summer Ever.  New leases, new semesters, new television, and a birthday for Yours Truly — it’s just about September, can you even believe it?

“It’s about fixing the content, not the form.”  That’s what we’re saying here about Life in Late 2008, and we’re pretty sure you’re agreeing with us.  Can you Twitter a Symphony?  The answer is a resounding YES, to which we will add: DO IT NOW.  We’re reading books right now, big, meaty books.  At the FSD NW/NW offices I’m seeing a huge Henry James tome — looks like Portrait of a Lady from where I’m sitting, and The Adventures of Augie March, by Saul Bellow.  Are you doing the Goodreads thing?  We are, although the only thing we’re enjoying about it blurbs from our pal Art Andrews, who writes perfect little reviews like this one, for Metamorphoses by Ovid:

This is how I would like to meet girls. Hunting for elk the forest, you come across a clearing in the woods. Bathing there, the River King’s daughter. Hand her the silver apple, and everything is cool. Don’t say anything stupid or Artemis will turn you into a plant, and the River King might send you on an impossible quest to prove your worth, but personally I’ve been through worse.

So it’s on a social networking that happens to revolve around books.  Great content says screw you, form!

MusicFest Northwest is happening in a few days, and no kidding we’ll be there.  The trick, as with last year, is to plan your agenda RIGHT.  Screw up and you’re standing in lines all night and the only band you wind up seeing is Seaweed.  AVOID this problem and do it Right with our handy tentative agenda, below:WEDNESDAY

Roseland
Fuck Buttons 9pm
Mogwai 10:30pm

THURSDAY

Wonder
5:30 No Age
7pm Battles

Crystal
9pm Calvin Johnson
10pm M Ward

Holocene
Oxford Collapse – Deerhunter at midnight

FRIDAY
7pm
Wonder
Built to Spill

Satyricon Eat Skull 9pm

Roseland
TV On the Radio 11:30

SATURDAY
Wonder
7pm Les Savvy Fav

Berbatis
11pm Trans Am
12am Polvo

Thanks again for Making Yours Miltonian.

Miltonian Forever

This is just a short message to remind you, our ever-faithful Reader, that we — the Proud, the Few, The Miltonian — are not going anywhere. The Daily Miltonian, though we haven’t been daily in quite some time, plans to remain your constant companion through these final days of Summer 2008, and indeed we will be there for you through the transitional months of Autumn 2008 and into what we are predicting to be the Most Important Winter of Our Lives.  Things are going to happen this Winter — wondrous, miraculous, beautiful things, and you can count on the Miltonian to document as much as we can.  That’s been our goal, really.  To document the world’s miracles, be they a television program or a douglas fir.  It’s just what we do here.  Would anyone expect anything less?

We’ll be at the Tom McCall Waterfront Park tonight, soaking in the evening river vibes and the Oregon Symphony.  There will be fireworks.  Do join us.  Summer’s ending, and life begins….now.

You’ve Been Away For So Long…

…you can’t ask why.

Summer Adventure Time Window, Pt. 1

Regular reader Jarvis (no idea who this person actually is) recently wrote the following in our Comments section:

Thing is, we’re not looking for posts with seven links or examples. We don’t want ANY links. We’re not looking for another BLOG. We want a window into the world of Summer Adventure time. We want more photos of local owls and watering holes. We want to know about North West summer vegetation overload. Who gave ETB a ride to coast? What sort of gold sounds were playing? Does this vehicle have only a cassette player? Wait a minute, have we even heard a WORD about Portland radio? Give us the goods, YOUR goods, not everyone else’s Crystal Castles goods.

Hungry.

Now you see?  This is what we’re talking about.  Actual responses to actual things we do here that make us feel like something is actually happening, here.  Awesome.  Our response to the above, in typical Miltonian fashion, is yet another photo essay series, presenting evidence, evidence of a Summer.  We believe that the following photographs answer the above questions as well as many, many more.  Do enjoy, and please, keep the comments coming.  Why call it a Blog?  Let’s call it a dialogue.

N00b Y0Rk T!MEZ

This is a Meta Post: an Internet-penned piece about NYT pieces that are all about the Internet.  It’s getting weirder, y’know?  Like the BOLD part of an article where instead of saying BEIJING it says INTERNET as the location.  We suggest using the search engine of your choice (Google, Lycos, Excite, Metacrawler, Altavista, Dogpile, Yahoo) to find the articles we are mentioning, as we are refraining from links for this particular entry.  Sometimes enough is, well, enough.

1. Last week in the NYT mag, our pal Schwartz wrote about Internet Trolls.  Amazing article, even moreso because of the comments section of its online incarnation.  I mean think about it: envision the comments section of an article about the denizens of a comments section.  Awesome.

2. This weeks NYT mag “On Language” is on “Avatar.”  This is mostly about online games, Second Life in particular.

3. NYT mag today also includes an article on Zune — the anti-iPod?

4. Also what appears to be an article about Kanye West’s blog.

5. Arts section cover story about online champions of Guitar Hero.

6. Also an article about how it’s no longer cool to namedrop obscure poets, because the iPhone is cooler.

7. An article about Peter Gabriel and the Web, “An Old Rocker Goes Digital.”

Okay we’re stopping now.  The composition of this post is requiring too much surfing, trolling, scrolling, typing.  You get the idea.  Personally we say: boooo.  The PAPER of record shouldn’t be concerned with what you see on your screen every day.  When TV came out, they didn’t run cover stories on I Love Lucy, did they?  Don’t answer that.  We know what, though.  We know that we’re just not cut out for this, this…Blogging.  You know how much time — unpaid, indoors, NONsummer time it takes to make the Right Post?  If we had done this Right we’d have given you twenty detailed examples, not seven.  We’d have linked all of the examples. Link, link, link.  We’d have — but we won’t, because we could, but we should…NOT.  We should be outside.  Look to your left, away from the screen, out the window.  Nice out there, isn’t it?  So say Fuck You, to us.  Turn the machine off.  And get back out there, into that warm air, into all that summer.  We’ll be waiting for you when you return.  Don’t worry.  You’ll be thirsty, and we’ll have the lemonade, in a pitcher, with ice cubes.  Yum.

Looking Forward

Fort Saint Davids, always eager to greet the future, is looking forward to a number of things that will be arriving, in our world, Fall 2008 and beyond. Here’s a sampler, just two — a taste of things to come.

SPORE

There is no doubt in any of our minds that Spore will indeed be the greatest game of all time. To further convince you, here is the trailer:

HEROES SEASON 3

Seriously, think about it now. Don’t you kinda miss them? All those goofy Heroes? You know…like Hiro? The Cheerleader? Even Peter, even Nathan? Dr. Suresh?! Sure sure, we miss em all, why the hell not! Fall TV is SOON, son, so get psyched now!

More information to come, as well as new photographs (summer) and information on our upcoming Three Stories event. Don’t forget us.

Daily Living With The Miltonian

NOTICE: This post will be punctuated with images taken from DVDs that Alexander Zahradnik intends [read: we have told him] to rent over the course of the rest of the summer.

1. Daily Miltonian is the name of this blog

2. Fort Saint Davids are the people behind Daily Miltonian.

3. FSD is [are, collectively] ashamed to be blog writers.

4. Fans of DM, and FSD, often encourage FSD to continue writing (creating?) DM.

5. It’s summer.

6. DM, often an entity in its own right, is ashamed to be a blog.

7. Nonetheless, DM needs FSD to continue existing [this sentence can and should be read in two ways].

8. Thus the paradox we face is that DM does not want to be a blog and FSD does not want to write a blog but DM needs FSD to exist and yet to exist, for DM, means to be a blog.

9. It wasn’t always this way.  Originally, the first entries/existence(s) of DM were written for a Zine [tentatively] called Fort Saint Davids Quarterly, by FSD.

10. Didn’t happen.  DM can be more easily read, anywhere with Internets, and is free.  Zines cost money and destroy trees.

11. But is it true that blogs ruin your mind?

12. Here’s what we want right now.  Your thoughts.  On us.  FSD.  DM.  The whole shebang.  Do you need us?  Are we needed?  Do you still care?  Do we help you?  Do we hold you back?  Do we give enough?  Not enough?  We are, as always, here to serve.  It’s just that, right now, we’re not sure who, or how, or what.  Or when.  Or anything.  So please.  

13. Let us know.