Here he is, six weeks early and yet, still right on time. More photos here.

I have to confess that I’m not as big a fan of Red House Painters as I perhaps should be, given my other musical predilections (though I do think that “Katy Song” is one of the great “sad bastard” songs of all time). I am, however, a huge fan of Sun Kil Moon, Mark Kozelek’s post-RHP project.

I picked up 2003’s Ghosts of the Great Highway (read my review) on a whim several years ago, and was not disappointed: it’s a magnificent and elegant album, full of lovely songs that positively ache with longing, melancholy, and nostalgia.

And so I’m very excited that Sun Kil Moon has a new album coming out on April 1, entitled, appropriately enough, April. The album has eleven songs, along with a bonus disc containing alternate versions of four album tracks. You can listen to one of the songs, “Moorestown”, on the Caldo Verde Records website. Click on the April sleeve art, then scroll down and click on the “Listen” link. It’ll be well worth the effort: “Moorestown” is an absolutely lovely track.

I was listening to the last half of NPR’s “Fresh Air” last night when I noticed that the person being interviewed sounded very familiar. Or at least, what he was saying sounded very familiar, as if I’d read those thoughts before. Turns out, the interviewee was Randall Balmer, who was talking about his new book, God in the White House: A History.

I’ve been a fan of Balmer’s ever since I read Mine Eyes Have Seen The Glory, and his last book, Thy Kingdom Come, was equally fascinating (read my review). So when I found out that Balmer has a new book coming out, I was instantly intrigued.

Actually, I would’ve been intrigued even if I hadn’t read his earlier books. Balmer is a circumspect speaker, and like his books, his interview is full of wisdom and depth (which shouldn’t be surprising, seeing as how he’s a professor of American religious history, an Episcopal priest, and an editor-at-large of Christianity Today).

Here’s the synopsis for God in the White House:

How did we go from John F. Kennedy declaring that religion should play no role in the elections to Bush saying, “I believe that God wants me to be president”?

Historian Randall Balmer takes us on a tour of presidential religiosity in the last half of the twentieth century—from Kennedy’s 1960 speech that proposed an almost absolute wall between American political and religious life to the soft religiosity of Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society; from Richard Nixon’s manipulation of religion to fit his own needs to Gerald Ford’s quiet stoicism; from Jimmy Carter’s introduction of evangelicalism into the mainstream to Ronald Reagan’s co-option of the same group; from Bill Clinton’s covert way of turning religion into a non-issue to George W. Bush’s overt Christian messages, Balmer reveals the role religion has played in the personal and political lives of these American presidents.

Americans were once content to disregard religion as a criterion for voting, as in most of the modern presidential elections before Jimmy Carter. But today’s voters have come to expect candidates to fully disclose their religious views and to deeply illustrate their personal relationship to the Almighty. God in the White House explores the paradox of Americans’ expectation that presidents should simultaneously trumpet their religious views and relationship to God while supporting the separation of church and state. Balmer tells the story of the politicization of religion in the last half of the twentieth century, as well as the “religionization” of our politics. He reflects on the implications of this shift, which have reverberated in both our religious and political worlds, and offers a new lens through which to see not only these extraordinary individuals, but also our current political situation.

 

Click here to read an excerpt from God in the White House on the NPR website, and find a link to listen to the entire interview.

On January 21, Cooper Lawrence appeared on a Fox News segment about Mass Effect, where she decried its sexual content and objectification of women.

Now, anyone who has spent any time actually playing Mass Effect would immediately realize how preposterous those claims are. Yes, Mass Effect does contain some sexual content, but it’s absolutely wrong to characterize it as “pornography” or as the focus of the game. Indeed, it’s entirely possible to sidestep that content altogether, depending upon how you play Mass Effect and what choices you make throughout its 20-30 hours of gameplay. (And let’s not forget the moral weight that Mass Effect puts on your choices, be they romantic or otherwise.)

However, as Lawrence even admits in the segment, she never actually played Mass Effect. In fact, according to the New York Times, she was basing her statements on what someone else had told her:

In an interview on Friday, Ms. Lawrence said that since the controversy over her remarks erupted she had watched someone play the game for about two and a half hours. “I recognize that I misspoke,” she said. “I really regret saying that, and now that I’ve seen the game and seen the sex scenes it’s kind of a joke.

“Before the show I had asked somebody about what they had heard, and they had said it’s like pornography,” she added. “But it’s not like pornography. I’ve seen episodes of ‘Lost’ that are more sexually explicit.”

And there you have it. You can read the full article here, which also includes more info about the gamer backlash against Lawrence’s claims. (Registration might be required.)

I find this “controversy” entirely predictable, and sadly so. Here we have a news program bringing on a “pundit” who knows absolutely nothing about what they’re talking about beyond some hearsay, and it’s foisted on the public as a serious and reasonable debate—which lasts all of 5 minutes or so.

This might make for good soundbites and clever promos (I especially liked the “‘Se’Xbox” headline in the Fox News spot), but ultimately, it’s nothing more than disinformation and deception.

Should there be a frank and respectful discussion about sex, nudity, violence, etc., in video games, and the effects that they might have on children (and adults for that matter)? A discussion about the concerns parents might have, and the steps that they can take to protect their children from such things should they want to? Absolutely. But Fox News and Cooper Lawrence have given us all a perfect example of how to derail and undermine that kind of discussion and prevent it from ever happening.

• I hope that The Ross brings 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days—which won the Palme D’Or at the 2007 Cannes festival—to Lincoln soon, and here are two reasons why.
• Brett McCracken reviews Cloverfield: Cloverfield packs a wallop, in part because it takes our media-obsessed curiosity and slaps it in our face. We are increasingly prone to gawk, to see what the fuss is about, to be ‘in on’ whatever gruesome or unlikely anomaly is out there to be recorded. This is why Cloverfield‘s cryptic ‘what is this about’ marketing campaign worked so well. We have to know. We have to look. We must be a witness. People will want to see how it all went down… It’s entertainment.
• EA responds to that piss-poor Fox News piece on Mass Effect—which you can watch here (just try to keep your lunch down). Not surprisingly, things are at a bit of an impasse.
• Speaking of video games, I have a feeling that Star Wars: Force Unleashed is going to be the game of 2008—if these videos are any indication, that is.
• Watch the English-subtitled trailer for The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, courtesy of IGN.
• TUAW gives a sneak peek of Delicious Library 2.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, it’s been over seven years since we’ve heard anything new from Writ On Water. But listening to “Dead Give Away”, a new track that was just uploaded to the band’s MySpace page, it’s like those years never happened; it’s 2000 all over again, and in a good way.

“Dead Give Away” has everything you might want from a Writ On Water track: lush, 4AD-esque atmospherics, breathy vocals, sad and wintry melodies, etc. All in all, not a bad teaser for A Wingless King, the band’s new full-length, which will be released next month, and will set off a flurry of Writ On Water-related activity throughout the remainder of 2008.

• Heath Ledger was found dead in his apartment, possibly due to a drug overdose. He was 28 years old. Rest in peace. Cinematical and GreenCine Daily have begun posting retrospectives.
• The 2008 Oscar nominations have been announced. Personally, I hope No Country For Old Men, Ratatouille, and There Will Be Blood (even though it hasn’t come to Lincoln yet) clean house.
• PopMatters reviews Eric Matthews’ The Imagination Stage: Matthews is an unusual figure in contemporary music, conservatory-trained but versed in 1960s and 1970s pop and film music, a solo composer and arranger who is nonetheless committed to live, organic sounds. Though it was created alone, The Imagination Stage is by no means a bedroom recording; it contains all the expansive possibilities of the studio, combined with the eccentric personal vision of the home-recording artist. The Imagination Stage will be released by Empyrean Records on 1/22/08.
• Portishead Announce First Tour in Forever. Of course, all of the dates are on the other side of the Atlantic.
• The Library of Congress just released over 3000 vintage photos onto Flickr. More info here. Via
• Has Internet Explorer Just Shot Itself in the Foot?: No matter what great leaps forward the Internet Explorer team make from now on, the majority of developers won’t use them and the majority of users won’t see them. By doing this the Internet Explorer team may have created their own backwater, shot themselves in the foot and left themselves for dead. If this comes to pass, it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving browser.

C.S. Lewis, The Weight Of Glory:

In speaking of this desire for our own faroff country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.