Kurt Vonnegut–The Sirens of Titan (1959)

SOUNDTRACK: KING’S X-Tape Head (1998).
Tape Head follows the relatively gentle and harmonious Ear Candy with a serious blast of groov-y heavy metal.  The album is solidly consistent and very smooth.  Despite the heaviness of many of the tracks, it doesn’t have a lot of the angular/unusual chords of their earlier records.  It also doesn’t juxtapose [...]

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Max Barry–”Springtide”, Cory Doctorow–”Other People’s Money”, Warren Ellis–”The Position”, Lowell Yaeger–”Factory”, Michael Bagnulo–”Abstract” (Forbes, October 15, 2007)

SOUNDTRACK: KING’S X-Ear Candy (1996).
I think of Ear Candy as King’s X most upbeat record musically. Even the cover is upbeat!  It’s their first cover in ages which isn’t dark and forbidding.  It actually has a white border!  And of course, it’s hard to miss the psychedelic, brightly colored scarab beetle.
And the music matches the [...]

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Jeffrey Eugenides–”Great Experiment” (New Yorker, March 31, 2008)

SOUNDTRACK: VIC CHESNUTT-North Star Deserter (2007).
The only thing I knew about Vic Chesnutt before this CD was that he was the songwriter for a benefit CD called Sweet Relief II: The Gravity of the Situation (1996).  I bought it mostly for Garbage’s “Kick My Ass” and Mary Margaret O’Hara’s “Florida”, not for Chesnutt, who I’d [...]

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Will Ferguson & Ian Ferguson–How to Be a Canadian* *(Even if you already are one) (2001)

SOUNDTRACK: MIKE FORD-Canada Needs You (Volume 1) (2005).

Volume 2 of this series has just come out, but I haven’t received it yet, so I’ll start with Vol. 1
I discovered this series because I love Moxy Fruvous, and any member of the mighty Moxy is worth checking out solo.  Mike Ford has a wonderful voice, a [...]

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Will Ferguson–Why I Hate Canadians (1997)

SOUNDTRACK: THE NEW ODDS-Cheerleader (2008).
Craig Northey, singer of the Odds has written some great songs by himself and with a slew of other projects.  But most notably, he did the theme songs (opening and closing) for Corner Gas.  At last, “My Happy Place” the Closing Credits song has now been released on this disc by [...]

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Sarah Shun-Lein Bynum–”Yurt” (New Yorker, July 21, 2008)

SOUNDTRACK: KING’S X: Dogman (1994).
Dogman follows up King’s X with, to my mind, a much more satisfying collection.  It starts of with the fantastic “Dogman,” a great chance for Doug to show off his vocal range.  “Shoes” has some great gospelish harmonies that lead to a wonderfully chunky riff.  And “Pretend” sounds about as close [...]

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Roberto Bolaño–”Clara” (New Yorker, August 4, 2008)

SOUNDTRACK: KING’S X-King’s X (1992).

I was rather disappointed by this album when it came out.  After the glories of Faith Hope Love, this was a return to some pretty straight ahead metal.  And, boy is it heavy–well, the first song is anyway, and it does rather set the tone.  Nevertheless, the rest of the songs [...]

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What I learned… (24) Why you cannot vote for McCain if you are under 25

For reasons that are not clear to me, this upcoming Presidential election is evidently going to be very close.
Think of yourself as an employer (which is what you are in this case).  Do you hire the 72 year old man who thinks things in your company are going great and should continue on the track [...]

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Cory Doctorow–Little Brother (2008)

SOUNDTRACK: BE YOUR OWN PET-Get Awkward (2008).
Be Your Own Pet are a bunch of young kids from Nashville.  Get Awkward is their second album.  According to the liner notes, two of them were born in 1988 and one of them in 1990.  1990!  They play three-chord punk music which focuses primarily on having fun and [...]

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Robert Coover–The Case of the Severed Hand [Revisited]

[RE-READ September 16, 2008] “The Case of the Severed Hand”
One shouldn’t be afraid of criticism.  Heck, if you’re going to have an opinion you have to expect people will argue with you.  I didn’t like this story when I read it.  But, when Daniel commented, even though the criticism was basically, “I liked the story [...]

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