SOUNDTRACK: BLACK SABBATH-Sabotage (1975).

Sabotage seems to be somewhat forgotten (maybe because of the creepy cover art 0f Ozzy in a kimono and fascinating platform shoes, Bill Ward in red tights with a codpiece (and visible underwear on the back cover), and Geezer and Tony’s mustaches).
But this album rocks pretty hard and heavy.
“Hole in the Sky” is a sort of spastic rocker with Ozzy screaming vocals over the top of the rocking track.
“Don’t Start (Too Late)” is the by now obligatory acoustic guitar piece.  But this one is different, for it has some really wild and unpredictable aspects to it.

“Symptom of the Universe” is another classic Sabbath track, a blistering heavy fast riff with the wonderful Ozzy-screamed: “Yeaaaaaahs!”  It then surprises you by going into an extended acoustic guitar workout for a minute and a half at the end.

“Megalomania” is a slow ponderous piece. Unlike the psychedelic tracks from the previous records, this one moves along with a solid back beat. It also has a great bridge (“Why doesn’t everybody leave me alone?”). They definitely had fun with the effects (echoing vocals, etc.) on this one.  And, like their prog rock forebears, this song segues into another rhythm altogether when we get the wonderfully fast rock segment.  And the humorous point where the music pauses and Ozzy shouts “Suck me!”

“Thrill of it All” is a pretty good rocker, which after a  pretty simple opening morphs into a slow, surprisingly keyboard-fueled insanely catchy coda.  “Supertzar” is a wonderfully creepy instrumental.  It runs 3 minutes and is all minor-keys and creepy Exorcist-like choirs.  When the song breaks and the bizzaro Iommi riff is joined by the choir, you can’t help but wonder why no horror film has used this as its intro music.

“Am I Going Insane (Radio)” is a very catchy keyboardy track.  It clearly has crossover potential (although the lyrics are wonderfully bizarre).  But it ends with totally creepy laughing and then wailing.    “The Writ” ends the album. It’s another solid rocker and it ends with an acoustic coda with Ozzy’s plaintive vocals riding over the top.

Sabotage has some truly excellent moments.  It’s just hard to fathom the amount of prog-rock tendencies they’ve been throwing onto their last few discs (we’ll say Rick Wakeman had something to do with it).

Black Sabbath made two more albums before Ozzy left.  I haven’t listened to either one of them in probably fifteen years.  And my recollection of them is that they’re both pretty lousy.  Maybe one of these days I’ll see if they prove me wrong.

[READ: December 16, 2009] McSweeney’s #7

This was the first McSweeney’s edition that I didn’t buy new.  My subscription ran out after Issue #6 and I never saw #7  in the stores.  So, I recently had to resort to a used copy.

This issue came packaged with a cardboard cover, wrapped with a large elastic band.

Inside you get several small volumes each with its own story (this style hearkens back to McSweeney’s #4, but the presentation is quite different).  7 of the 9 booklets feature an artistic cover that relates to the story but is done by another artist (not sure if they were done FOR the story or not).  I have scanned all of the covers.  You can click on each one to see a larger picture.

The booklets range from 16 to 100 pages, but most are around 30 pages.  They are almost all fiction, except for the excerpt from William T. Vollman’s 3,500 page Rising Up and Rising Down and the essays that accompany the Allan Seager short story.

KEVIN BROCKMEIER-”The Ceiling” [cover by Eric White]
The basic plot of this story is quite simple: a large black square appears in the sky one day.  Slowly it sinks towards the earth, growing larger and larger.  Despite the somewhat Stephen King-like nature of the premise, the story is really all about how people live their lives: specifically, how one man’s family acts during this crisis.  I enjoyed the story quite a bit.

However, I was confused by the beginning.  The opening scene is at the son’s  birthday party.  There’s a lot of detail given, but it doesn’t seem to have much to do with the rest of the story.  It begins with the son telling a fictional tale about himself in a hot air balloon with the father noting, on a separate line: “This is a story.”

It seemed like this was all a set up for something special.  And I’m just not sure how that ties together with the rest of the story.  But I’m not too worried about it as I enjoyed the piece as a whole.

ANN CUMMINS-”Red Ant House” [cover by Tim Bower]
I really enjoyed Cummins’ story in McSweeney’s #6, so I was excited to read this one.  The red ant house is a house down the block that is infested with red ants.  A new family moves into the house and the daughter of that family immediately latches on to the narrator of the story, Leigh.  Leigh is one of 6 kids whose mother is pregnant again.

The new girl, Theresa Mooney, lives with a man who is not her father and a woman who is her mother.  The man seems to have families all over the place.  None of this is good news for Theresa Mooney, especially when Leigh and her siblings decide to point it out to her.  Despite her best intentions however, Leigh and Theresa become friendly, and their bonding is complete when they dare each other to do something risky.

This story didn’t blow me away as much as the previous one, but there was something oddly affecting about it.

A.M. HOMES-”Do Not Disturb” [cover by Melinda Beck]
This is a very prickly story.  It can easily be summed up by the exchange: “You knew I was a bitch before you married me, say something original.”  In the story, a man and his wife are quite obviously falling apart (as individuals and as a couple).  Before the evening’s events, the couple had yet another huge fight.  And he thinks, yet again, of leaving her.  But that night, during dinner, she becomes gravely ill.

Since she is a doctor, she is reluctant to go to the ER, but after several hours of agony, she relents.  She is diagnosed with cancer.  But this diagnosis, rather than softening her, as everyone suspects, just makes her more prickly, more demanding, even less compassionate.  But he can’t leave a cancer-riddled wife can he?  Even if she pushes him out?  This was a very dark story, but it was very powerful.  And, as with all of A.M. Homes work that I’ve read, it was very good.

MICHAEL CHABON-”The Return of the Amazing Cavalieri” [front & back covers by Chris Ware]
I loved The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay when I read it a few years ago.  I was delighted to discover that this story (the cover art suggests it is an “Un-Told Tale of Kavalier and Clay”) was included here.  Sadly for me, I don’t remember too many details of the novel (it was like ten years ago, right?).  Happily for me, they are not relevant to this story.

This piece concerns Cavalieri himself.  He is walking to school with his nephew and the fear and dread he had during grammar school is rushing back at him.  Cavalieri’s nephew has promised his class that The Amazing Kavalier will perform some magic tricks (maybe even escape from a safe!) for Sharing Time.  Cavalieri susses up the class and decides that they are at the perfect age to be simply skeptical.  He grows more nervous as Sharing Time approaches.

He proceeds to perform his simple tricks, but when he suspects that the kids are not all that impressed, he attempts one grand feat.  I enjoyed this story immensely and it makes me want to re-read Kavalier and Clay (or at the very least Maps & Legends, which is sitting on my bedside right now).

The cover art by Chris Ware is, of course, fantastic.  The front cover is designed to look just like a comic book.  And the back cover is even more fun (in a sick and twisted way) as an ad for how much your life will suck if you have a baby.

HEIDI JULAVITS-”Little Little Big Man” [cover by Elizabeth Kairys]
This is, frankly, a bizarre story.  It involves a tiny man named Big who works for a rodeo.  And beyond that the story is full of what I can’t decide is fantasy, magical realism or just hallucinations.

Big becomes involved with a large woman who carries him over her shoulder (his face getting caught in her skirt ruffles as it bumps against her behind).  This part was very funny.

They become serious and settle down.  He grows unhappy and winds up spending a lot of his time climbing into her uterus to read the graffiti that her six children have written in there.

[Pause for people to digest that sentence].

So I’m not sure what to make of details like that.  There are questions of impotence, unfaithfulness and pseudo-bestiality.  And while I understand what happened plot-wise, arriving there was a very bizarre path.

J.T. LEROY-”Harold’s End” [cover by Sharon Leong]
Of course, now we know that J.T. Leroy is a fraud or a pseudonym depending on your opinion of the author’s stunt.  It makes it hard to read this for the first time without having the author’s reality impinging on the story.  I’m not sure if I would have been quite as cynical about the story if I didn’t know what I know about Leroy.  But I an inclined to think that I would have been at least suspicious of the details of the story anyhow.

The basic premise here is that a man approaches a group of kids on the street.  They are suspicious of him (is he a cop, a social worker, a john?), but when they see he is handing out free needles, they relent.  He singles out one boy and invites him back to his house, where they shoot heroin and hang out for an extended period of time.  A single event (that I will get to in a moment) happens which causes friction between them and the boy is asked to leave.

I was immediately suspicious of the story because the kids seem completely unreal.  I’m not even sure how old they are supposed to be.  They hang out on the curb but it’s unclear if they are trying to score drugs, if they are trying to score dates or what.  The only thing we know is that they all have pets (a rat, a pit bull and a boa constrictor)  hanging out with them.  And, the kids tell the man that all of their pets have pedigrees (in far more exacting detail than one might expect a kid to know).  The title of the story comes because the boy who the man brings home did not have a pet.  Along with the heroin, the man gives the boy a snail named Harold as a pet that he can take care of himself.

So, despite the fact that the man is in the role of chickenhawk for this young boy, nothing sexual ever happens between them, except for the event that causes the friction (which is wholly unexpected and really rather disgusting).  But it’s not even entirely apparent afterward why the man is upset (because it didn’t work? was he just embarrassed?).  The whole scene from start to finish seemed unbelievable.  Finally, as the story ends, we see the boy is too squeamish to clean out the snail’s poop, yet moments later he willingly dives into a dumpster (not to mention the disgusting scene above).  It just doesn’t add up.

The whole story rang false to me.  Maybe it was meant to be over the top; maybe it was meant to be surreally funny.  Maybe it was a hyperreal or fantasy look at kids on the street.  But I don’t think so.  It was just creepy.

COURTNEY ELDRIDGE-”The Former World Record Holder Settles Down” [cover by Katherine Streeter]
This is one of the longest stories that McSweeney’s has published.  It’s 75 pages.  And, what is so great about it is that it never feels like a long story.  And what’s even better is that the story goes through many twists and turns to end up in a sad but interesting place.

I loved the fact that the story begins by talking about the narrators’ husband.  And he is a bowling dork.  He loves bowling, he bowls all the time, and he has even gotten the narrator–a hipster New York woman who only thought of bowling ironically–to enjoy bowling.  As well as other sports, too.  He gets her to watch and enjoy baseball (and she develops a mad crush on Don Zimmer (!)).

But back to bowling.  Her husband, Joel, gets very mad at himself if he doesn’t bowl well.  And his mood stays dark for quite some time.

But.  He’s not the titular record holder.  The world record of the title comes as a complete shock (and I won’t reveal it).  But once we learn of the record, everything in the story changes (except they still love bowling).

As the story progresses, we learn more and more about the narrator and how much her father’s disappearance had affected her.  And how much she hates to talk about her past.  And how much she loves her husband for not pushing things about her past.  Until he does.  And then things comes to a head.

There’s so much going on in this story, and it all starts so simply as a bowling tale.   It was a great, great story.

WILLIAM T. VOLLMAN-”The Old Man:  A Case Study from Rising Up and Rising Down“
This is a 100-page excerpt from Vollman’s 3,500 page study of violence called Rising Up and Rising Down (which I will never read).  This excerpt is a case study, written in 1995 and concerns Muslim terrorists in Thailand.

The excerpt reads like a real-life version of Apocalypse Now.  Vollman is in Thailand trying to get an interview with The Old Man, the reputed head of PULO, the Pattani Unification Liberation Organization.  Vollman interviews (with his faithful translator D.) citizens of Thailand and Malaysia as well as political figures and former members of PULO.

The main problem I have with the excerpt is that the context is left out.  We never learn who D. is or how he met her.  And, we have no context for WHY he wants to do this.  He spends days and days negotiating with bureaucrats, thugs and taxi drivers only to ultimately end up right where he started from.  Is it all in aid of this book?  I’m not entirely sure.  I’m sure that the full text covers this, so it’s not really a compliant.  I just wish I had a little context  for this daunting piece.

As for the piece itself although it is a look at only one instance of violence, it is still fascinating to hear people involved in this organization (the quotes are direct in broken English, lending credence to the authenticity).  And it is fascinating to see the kind of security that this man, the head of a terrorist organization, has and yet doesn’t have (and the difficult in actually finding the man).  And to hear how much is hidden in plain sight about members of the organization is rather surprising.

No answers are forthcoming about the why’s of terrorism (maybe they are answered in the big book).  But Vollman is a dogged investigator and an excellent writer.  And although I don’t want to say I enjoyed the excerpt, I’m glad I read it.  (But I’m still not going to read the 3,500 page version).

ALLAN SEAGER-”This Town and Salamanca”
Seager is a once-revered writer whose work has largely gone out of print.  This booklet contains this short story as well as some commentary from others.  The three nonfiction essays attached add a lot of backstory, and certainly allow the reader to learn a lot more about his work and about Seager himself.

I didn’t think I would enjoy the story all that much.  They way it opened, I feared it was going to be a travelogue.  But as it progressed I found it really enjoyable and surprisingly deep.  The premise is that in his youth, John was a world traveler.  He built a boat and sailed to Cuba.  He joined the army to learn how to fly, and then he left the army and then he rejoined the army once again.  He learned to fence in Italy and France.  And then he returned from Salamanca to settle down in “this town.”

The story is really about the other residents of the town and how they more or less hung their hopes and dreams on his journeys, since none of them would ever leave the town.  They relish his stories when he returns and ask for as many details as they can get.  And his details are juicy and quite delightful.

But when he settles down in his home town, everyone is a little disappointed that their wanderer has stopped wandering.  It is a simple no-frills story, and was quite effective.

JOHN WARNER-”Allan Seager: An Introduction”
Warner provides a brief sketch of Seager’s life: his rise to fame as a short story writer (and the numerous places that have published his work: Esquire, The New Yorker, Playboy) and his eventual loss of recognition.  He also fills in details about his personal life (and health).

JOAN FRY-”Colorless in Limestone Caverns: a remembrance”
As a student, Fry set out to seduce Seager.  She was ultimately successful.  But their relationship proved to be a terrible hindrance to her creative writing (although she wound up being the impetus for one of Seager’s own stories).  She spent much of their time together trying to get away.  I actually found this true story to be slightly more compelling than Seager’s short story itself.

STEVEN CONNELLY-”Man is Born For Sorrow as the Sparks Fly Upwards: a remembrance”
Connelly was a student of Seager’s.  His essay here describes how autobiographical “This Town and Salamanca” is.  Seager also traveled the world and then settled down in his home town to write.  It also describes him as a wonderful teacher, who knew as much about James Joyce as anyone.  Seager was inspirational for Connelly as well as many other students.

~~

McSweeney’s #7 is another great collection of stories.  It was absolutely worth tracking it down.

SOUNDTRACK: The Believer July/August 2009 Music Issue Compilation CD: “Fantastic and Spectacular” (2009).

After the globe-spanning CD in last year’s issue, the 2009 Believer CD returns to the dominant musical style of the first few.  This disc is a collection of unreleased, acoustic songs from the editors’ favorite singer-songwriters.

And, wow, check out the bands that are represented here: Sam Phillips, The Clean, The Waterboys, Lloyd Cole, Young Marble Giants, The English Beat, Lisa Germano, Unrest, Suddenly, Tammy!, The Lilac Time and Mary Margaret O’Hara.  It’s an amazing collection of artists who agreed to release these songs only to this Believer compilation.

The liner notes ask a few questions of each artist so you get a nice peek into their working styles.  And for a few of them you find out what they’ve been up to for the last few years.  Although, sadly Mary Margaret O’Hara (sister of actress Catherine O’Hara!) only mentions that you can get a copy of her only released album Miss America directly from her.  And since I thin it’s a great album, I’ll pass along her email for ordering purposes only: m2oh8 @ hotmail.com.

So, what do we get in this collection?  Sam Phillips provides a fantastic drum-heavy, 90 second song.  Robert Scott’s song is a delightful, simple acoustic track.  I’ve always liked The Waterboys, but Mike Scott tends to go on and on, and this track is no exception.  It’s very very catchy but it’s over 10  minutes long!  The consistently excellent Lloyd Cole doesn’t disappoint.  Phil Wilson’s poppy number is very good.

I’m surprised that I don’t have any Young Marble Giants in my collection, and Stuart Moxham’s song here makes me want to see what I’m missing.  I swore that Dave Wakeling of The English Beat was Bob Mould on this song, but as soon as I saw who he was I recognized that English Beat voice in a more intimate setting.

Mark Robinson of Unrest also records as Cotton Candy, and this absurdly poppy ditty (the only duet on the disc) provides the title of the disc and one of the truly happiest moments. Except, of course, for Beth Sorrentino from Suddenly, Tammy! whose song “Such a Beautiful Day” is absolutely wonderful.  And if it is any indication of the greatness of Suddenly , Tammy!  then their absence from the msuicial scene is a real shame.

Stephen Duffy who records as Tin Tin and The Lilac Time writes songs that are instantly memorable and catchy as anything.  This one is no exception. And the Mary Margaret O’Hara song is not quite as out there as you might expect from her, but it’s really quite good.  I wonder what she has been up to for decades now.

There’s a secret bonus track from a brand new New Zealand band called Haunted Love.  When this issue went to print they were about to release their first EP, and this track doesn’t even appear on that (it’s THAT secret!).  It’s a great song and I hope good things come to them.  It is also not acoustic, but everyone can break their own rules once in a while right?

This is another string compilation from The Believer.  The track listing is here.

[READ: December 16, 2009] “Diary of an Interesting Year”

So this story is, indeed, a diary.  It is written in several entrees.  And, as we learn from the first entry, the diary itself was a gift to the writer from G. for her 30th birthday.  And, although we don’t learn it from the first entry, we quickly discover that global warming predictions were accurate and, basically the earth as we know it is no more.

But what I liked about the writing was that it revealed this global catastrophe somewhat subtly.

The first entry mentions that the diary was not wet when she received it (hmm), but it’s not until the third or fourth entry when she reveals that G., an environmental pessimist, is actually delighted at the catastrophe that he predicted would come sooner rather than later.  Although you don’t get a lot of details, it’s pretty clear what happened.

And so we get a post-apocalyptic diary of a woman not only struggling to survive, but also dealing with a horribly irritating man.  There’s really no hope for her or anyone else in the story, but they press on as things continue to get worse and worse.  A new stranger enters the scene, which can only mean more problems.  His way of dealing with the catastrophe is far more violent than her.  And she immediately hates him, but he provides a few things (like alcohol!) that were not available before.

Each entry adds more horror to her story.

I really liked the way the author concluded this story.  I mean, it more or less guaranteed that she would be writing herself into a corner: how many ways can a diary story end?  But her solution was quite clever, even if it doesn’t offer very much in the way of hope for the diarist.

It’s available here.

SOUNDTRACK:  McSweeney’s #6 comes with a CD.

Most of the music on the CD is performed by They Might Be Giants (a rather perfect fit for McSweeney’s).  Some other musicians who appear are: M. Doughty, Philip Glass, Michael Meredith. Roger Greenawalt & S.E. Willis

Instructions included with book:

#3. The compact disc contains music.  There are 44 discrete pieces of music –”Tracks”–on this compact disc.  Each Track corresponds to a picture, series of pictures, or story–a Piece–in this journal.  When you are reading or looking at a certain Piece, we ask that you cue your compact disc to the corresponding Track on the disc.  The appropriate track number will appear prominently, usually under the title of each Piece.  Note: The track number will no appear on subsequent pages of the Piece.

#6. Please note that you may listen to Tracks without reading their Pieces and you may read Pieces without listening to their corresponding Tracks.  But this is not recommended.  You fucking bastard.

[READ: December 8, 2009] McSweeney’s #6

I’m finally getting back to reading some older McSweeney’s issues.  This was the final issue that I received from my initial subscription.  I distinctly remember being excited by the CD and maybe reading some of the book, but clearly never finishing it.

So yes, this issue comes with a CD.  The intro note explains that each Piece in the book has an accompanying  Track on the CD, and, you are to only listen to the Track that accompanies the Piece you are reading…never read a piece while listening to the wrong track.  Ever!  It explains that each Track has been created to be as long as it would take you to read each Piece.  But there are obviously many exceptions. The first story for instance is well over ten pages but the song is about 5 seconds long.  And, the Arthur Bradford Track is 8 minutes long when anyone could read the Piece much more quickly.

The bulk of the songs are by They Might Be Giants.  Anyone who knows TMBG knows you can’t summarize their work, and this book exercise is ideal for them: there are several pieces that are just a few second long.  But they also write some nice longer pieces as well.  And, of course, they are perfectly suited for mood music that works well with the writing.  Some of the songs have words which is a bit distracting while trying to read, but that’s okay.  I did try my best to follow the prescription about only listening to the appropriate song, but I admit to getting off pace from time to time. 

The notes also state that this was initially meant to be an all art issue.  They abandoned that premise, but there is still a lot of very cool art work in it. There are excerpts from artists’ works, there are drawings by non-artists, there’s even a full comic sketch from Chris Ware!

This is probably one of my favorite McSweeney’s thus far.  The music is great, the artwork is wonderful.  Some of the short stories are really really short (a page or two) and most of those are just okay, but they are made up for by some really strong ones (Zadie Smith).

BREYTEN-BREYTENBACH-”(Notes from the Middle World)”
Breytenbach is a South African writer. I’ve found his work to be hard to read (because of th content) in the past.  This piece I found doubly hard as it was very abstract (its about placelessness). The Middle World is meant to be the world in between realities.  I can’t say I got a lot of it, although I understood the gist.  This was apparently a speech, and I wonder if it would have worked better as one (with a handout).

KARL HAENDEL-various photos:
“Dollar for Dollar Invest in the Past,” “Oprah Helped Me Through This,” “It’s Getting Late”, “Mr. & Mrs. Nuclear,” “I Want It Faster Better Now,” “Grassroots Internet Revolution,” “Even My T-Shirt has a History,” “Lincoln, Washington,” “People Died Today,” “Be Kind and Gentle When You Have a Big Stick,” “Mona Lisa”
Haendel is an artist who (at least for these compositions) paints a few words onto white plywood and then photographs them in specific locations.  You can tell by the title list above a little of the intent behind them.  I enjoyed his pieces quite a bit.  Although they work more on a “huh” or perhaps a “yes!” level than as brilliant works of art.  The exception is Mona Lisa where the plywood has a print of Mona Lisa attached sideways to a car which is parked in front of an Art Gallery.

STEVE FEATHERSTONE-”The Garden of Eden”
A very short piece (one paragraph) about a man whose father is intending to build the Garden of Eden in his yard. Details are given, which are undermined by the story’s conclusion.  More of an exercise than a story, it’s hard to say much about it.

IAN FRAZIER-”Eulogy for Saul Steinberg”
This is a loving look at Saul Steinberg.  I didn’t know a thing about Steinberg before reading this, but I was charmed by the man and found this to be very enjoyable piece.
The song for this piece is John Linnel’s solo song “West Virginia.”

W. KOENIGSTEIN-”W. Koenigstein’s Colossal Outpouring: Affair Number Six”
With an Intro by Lawrence Weschler (more about him later).  Koenigstein created delightful landscapes with very simple line drawings.  This showcases several of the pictures from one notebook (And details his rather obsessive work).

SEAN WILSEY-”Marfa, Revisited”
This is a continuation of the Marfa saga that Wilsey wrote about in McSweeney’s #2.  Unlike that first piece, which was lengthy and packed with information, this Revisiting is a bit more fun. It is broken down into several small sections of examples of the quirky kinds of things that happen when you visit Marfa.  It is full of interesting characters, probably none of whom are unique to Marfa, but for whom Marfa was probably like a calling card.
The song for this piece was written and performed by Michael Meredith.

AMY SILLMAN-”Untitled”
A painting, part of a  35 foot long painting.  See samples of her work here.

ZADIE SMITH-”The Girl with Bangs”
This is the first Zadie Smith piece I’ve read since enjoying On Beauty.  It’s an older story (published after her forst novel), and I think it’s great.  The premise is that the narrator, a woman who usually dates men falls for a woman with spectacular bangs.  The narrator now understands what men go through when they’re rendered speechless by a beautiful woman.  It’s a funny and insightful piece and showed that Smith was a great writer, with an excellent grasp of emotions even then.  I fully intend to read the rest of her work, and this was a great impetus to find that first novel.

The story ends with a blank page that notes that Smith’s story used to be longer.

CANDY JERNIGAN-”Excerpt from 99 Blue Rocks”
Candy Jernigan  and her partner Philip Glass traveled to Nova Scotia.   He composed and she drew pictures of rocks.  Here’s a sample of many of these drawings.  And they are technically brilliant.  Most of them look like photographs.  But beyond that, the rocks also seems to have, if not personalities, then at least some kind of quality that makes them seem like more than “just rocks.”  It’s pretty amazing.
The music for this piece is written and performed by Philip Glass

ROY KESEY-”The Workshop”
This piece is a sort of fable about patience.  When a man is told to make an airplane out of a paperclip, he is perpetually sent back to work on it until it is done correctly.  The reaction to his success, and the conclusion of the piece are quite delightful.

GINA O’MARA-”After This, Everything Got Louder and No One Could be Heard”
This very short piece concerns the creation of a whale, out of the ether.  Something of a creation myth.  I’m just not that inspired by these shorter pieces.

ANN CUMMINS-”Billy by the Bay”
This is a funny/sad story about Billy.  Billy’s night has gone from awesome to terrible when he is publicly humiliated in from of the woman he was planning to hooking up with (she promised to feel his balls!).  Billy’s revenge is sweet but short-lived and is packed with adrenaline (and his large balls).
The accompanying song is Ann Cummins herself reciting the last six or seven paragraphs of the much longer story.  It’s fun to hear the author getting into her story.  Performed by Ann Cummins with S.E. Willis on piano.

WALKER EVANS-”The Deltiographs of Walker Evans”
A deltiograph is a picture postcard.  Walker Evans collected over 9,000 penny picture postcards.  They are preserved in a gallery.  Several are shown here and they are really quite neat.  They are either drawings or colored photographs from all over the country circa the early 20th century. There’s some really cool stuff here. I wish they were online for more thorough viewing.
The song is by Erika Kawalek with Roger Greenawalt on banjo.

BARRY BLITT-”Barry Blitt’s Vacation Postcards”
Blitt is an artist whose work is very familiar (he has done many New Yorker covers (including this week’s with President Obama and Santa Claus).  This is a collection of postcards that he designed and drew.  (He even includes the note inside the “place stamp here” box).  There’s a short interview with him which is also revealing.  I enjoying learning about his technique, and of course, the pictures themselves are great.

JOHN WARNER-”Tough Day for the Army: In the Beginning”
A weird little story that begins with he Army and ends with professional food photography.  I’m not entirely sure how they got from point A to point B.

LYDIA DAVIS-”Oral History with Hiccups”
This story was in Lydia Davis’ book Samuel Johnson is Indignant. I found this to be one of her lesser pieces, although it is mildly amusing.  There are graphic representations of hiccups in the story.

LAWRENCE WESCHLER-”Convergences: Gazing Out Toward: Kret/Friedrick/Diebenkorn”
Weschler’s Convergences book is pretty great.  This is another excerpt that was eventually put into the book. In this one he looks at several pictures of people gazing, whether at the viewer, at a sunset, or into the hazy distance. Weschler’s pieces are always fascinating.

CHRIS WARE-”Sketch for Little Lit:  A Very Sad Story About a Frog and A Banjo, Not at All Appropriate for Children”
Little Lit is a cool series of comic for kids.  This sketch was done for the inaugural edition.  However, if you know Chris Ware, you know that his stuff is not for children.  He somehow managed to rein this in and make it more kid friendly, but as it stands in this sketch, the piece is twisted (and quite funny).  The best thing about this piece here is that it shows Ware’s sketches.  So if you’ve ever wondered how he does his letters/figures, here’s a great chance to see them.  (It’s very cool).
The song is performed by M Doughty

SASKIA HAMILTON-”Robert Lowell’s Letters Containing Artwork”
This is a collection of poet Robert Lowell’s letters that contain art (he wrote a few when he was a kid, and then a few more much much later when his daughter was 13 or so).  His art is not very good, but as Hamilton argues, it was very expressive and revealed a lot about him.  It’s always fascinating to see an artist struggle (both before and after his success).

SAMANTHA HUNT-”Bathymetry”
A short piece about two sailors.  The American sailor mentions a mermaid but is lucky to be drawn away to his duty before the French sailor can regale him with a story of his own about a mermaid.  The mermaid story is pretty funny.

DAVE FORD-”Dave Ford’s Drawings by Trucks”
Dave Ford set up an art studio in he back of his big rig. It consisted of two liter bottles filled with fluid suspended from the top of the truck with pencils attached to the bottoms.  As he drove the truck the pencils would sketch out abstract “art.”  It’s fascinating, even if the art isn’t that inspirational.  But the picture of the bottles is pretty amazing.

MARK O’DONNELL-”Hard Truths”
Set up as a movie with stage directions, this piece is a series of clichés that attack each other in their attempt to get their messages across.

RICHARD ERIKSON-”Richard Erickson, Art Teacher Who Also Makes Art
Erikson’s art is fantastic.  The titles bring wonderful insight into the simple pictures (crumpled jeans are named “elephant”). Great stuff.”

ARTHUR BRADFORD-”Roslyn’s Dog”
The song for this track is Arthur Bradford reading the entire story.  Except…his ending is completely different in the audio versus the printed version.  It’s hard to know which to review.  The basic gist is that the narrator pet’s Rosyln’s dog which bites him.  In something reminiscent of a werewolf movie (although not scary), he gradually tuns into a dog himself. In the printed version, the dogs run off together; in the audio version, a major twist is thrown in.  I think I prefer the audio version, actually.

SHEILA HETI-”The Man from Out of Town”
This was a dark story which ended in a place that was surprisingly even more dark.

FRANZ SWANSON-”Slow”
This story is about an Indian named Slow, who will eventually grow up to be Sitting Bull.  It mostly involves Slow chasing Crow.  I wasn’t terribly inspired by this piece.

JUDY BUDNITZ-”Just Borrowing It for a Little While”
This was a fascinating story that left a lot to the imagination.  Two girls are driving, when something bad happens and they are sent to community service as hospital candy-stripers.  While there, they get into more (somewhat unintentional) mischief.  Although I’m not entirely sure what happened, I enjoyed reading it.

LAWRENCE WESCHLER-”Convergences: Girls in Their Turning: Richter/Vermeer/Velaszquez”
Another Convergence which relates back to the previous one.  This one is focused on girls turning away from the viewer.  The main painting is Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring.  I like this stuff quite a bit.
The song contains vocal samples of Robin “Goldie” Goldwasser.

TOMMY WALLACH-”The Life of Doug”
This story follows Doug, a loner and a loser who needs a new blender.  While at the store, Jay convinces him to buy more things.  We then look at Jay’s life, and then at Sam (Jay’s boss)’s life and then at Sam’s wife’s life and on and on until we get back to Doug for a satisfying circle. This story was light and fun, and I enjoyed it quite a but.  Next.

MATT FAGAN-”Roller Coaster”
In this story a woman on a date tells her date about Fantasy Dates which were much better than this date.

“MARY GALLAGHER-A Brief Unrelated Companion Piece to ‘Roller Coaster’ Written Without Mr. Fagan’s Knowledge”
This story was tacked on at the end of “Roller Coaster.” It is two sentences about God and dignity.

AD REINHARDT-”Art in Art is Art-as Art (Art-as-art Dogma, Part III)”
This is a series of slogans or perhaps even a manifesto about what art is and is not.  I can’t say it was that inspiring, frankly.
The song is excerpted from Free Cooperation’s “Our Master’s Voice” recorded in Warsaw, 1985.

The book ends with Contributors notes, song notes and a reproduction of the hand written musical score for the Philip Glass piece.

The back cover features excerpted lyrics from the CD and a place for the CD itself.

As I said, I enjoyed this issue quite a lot.  The artwork (in full-color!) was great, and, of course, the music played  a nice accompaniment.

SOUNDTRACK: DANKO JONES-Never Too Loud [US edition bonus tracks] (2009).

I reviewed this disc a few posts ago.   Since then the disc has finally been released in the States.  And, naturally, since I bought the import version there are three bonus tracks added on this one.  The three tracks are “My Problems (Are Your Problems Now);” “Sugar High”; “R.I.P. RFTC”

The tracks aren’t radically different from the rest of the disc.  However, the first track is notable for having a lot of backing vocals (yeah yeahs and other things).  It’s a bit weird.  As is the fact that the song sounds less bass heavy than most of their other songs–it’s still loud, but it seems a bit tinny.

The second track “Sugar High” sounds like Danko for a kids show.  In just about every other song I’ve ever heard that was about “sugar,” the sugar was a metaphor for sex.  And yet, this song’s chorus quite proudly proclaims, “ice cream cakes and candy cars, I’m the kind of guy who likes a sugar high” and “cotton candy and caramel I’m that type of guy.”  It’s almost too comical to be considered a real song, and yet it rocks really hard.  Some cartoon absolutely needs to use this song in its soundtrack.

The final song is about Rocket From the Crypt, obviously.  It’s also the first Danko song where I’ve had a hard time deciphering all of the lyrics.  But, suffice it to say that it’s a blistering fast track about the sad news that RFTC broke up.

Just three more interesting reasons to track down the CD now that it’s available in the States.

[READ: November 6, 2009] The Apocalipstix

The premise of this graphic novel is that a nuclear explosion has hit the U.S.  Our heroines are a kick-ass band comprised of three women (like Josie and the Pussy cats only really bad ass).  And despite the global destruction, they are still going to play their gigs.  Call it the “End of the World Tour.”

The main characters are: Mandy, a bad-ass black woman on guitar and vocals; Dot, a rather sweet (until she’s pushed) blonde bombshell on bass, and Megumi, a Japanese cowgirl (!) on drums who is mostly silent (she speaks Japanese) but who is very intense.

There are three short stories in this volume.  In the first, the girls fight in a Mad Max-inspired road battle against the thugs who stole their equipment (here’s where we see Dot’s wicked streak come out–when someone touches her bass).  The thugs lead them to the King of the region–how will he treat our heroines?

The second is a comic interlude in which the girls’ picnic is invaded by gigantic mutated ants.

The third is a battle of the bands.  In a Thunderdome-like setting, musicians from all over have come for the grand prize: gas!  The winner gets it all and, the losers have to walk.  Each of the ladies makes an acquaintance in the story (naturally with the men from the main competition in the contest–Hemageddon).  Until…  Well, the story sort of ends unresolved because of an upcoming sequel.

The sequel promises a drive to California.

So the book was fun.  It was a nice twist on the Mad Max style story (perhaps Tank Girl is a better reference?)  There was some good humor, so funny conceits and some rocking scenes (not too much in the way of lyrics to comment on, though).

The art work was one the best things about the book.  The style was great: strong lines, really effective scenes of motion and very expressive individual characters.  And the characters are so well drawn (and of course, they’re super hot) that you actually care about what happens to them.

I’m really looking forward to the next volume.

SOUNDTRACK: TINDERSTICKS-Tindersticks [the red one] (1993).

Tindersticks are a fascinating band.  The first distinctive thing about them is Stuart Staples’ voice: a deep rich bass that he uses almost like a whisper.  The second thing you notice is the music.  It’s an orchestral/chamber pop collection of dark rockers with fantastic moodiness to it.  And then you notice the lyrics: dark songs of lost (and decayed) love.

Yet despite the description of chamber pop, the nad is really much darker than chamber pop suggests.  The band has a very noir sound: organs that penetrate through walls of sound, tinkling pianos suring hushed moments.  The horns and strings add dark atmospherics (strings zing like a Hitchcock movie).  And the minor key chords are rich and loud.

You also get a song like “Whisky and Water” which genuinely rocks hard (loud guitars are featured).  Or a simple acoustic guitar driven song like “Blood.”  Throughout the disk you get these fantastic melodies that play off of Staples’ voice and the twisted lyrics.  “City Sickness” and “Patchwork” are just two of the tracks that are very catchy.

And then there’s the fantastic “Jism” with its awesome noir organ.  Or “Raindrops” with its accents of vibes and the beautiful piano trilling at the end (and the detailed and emotional lyrics: What we got here is a lazy love / It mooches around the house / Can’t wait to go out / What it needs, it just grabs / It never asks / We sit and watch the divide widen / We sit and listen to our hearts crumble”).  “Her” follows up with a wonderfully flamenco-infused spaghetti western number.

And lets not forget “Drunk Tank” a propulsive song that is as sinister as it is catchy.  Oh heck, I could just keep raving.  But there’s 22 songs!   Four songs are about a minute each, and the disc is about 75 minutes (not bad for a debut!).  And the disc never loses momentum or its sense of purpose.

What really distinguishes this disk is the mood of the music.  Like the best soundtracks, you can feel the emotions and imagery with the music alone, but when you add Staples’ evocative lyrics and powerful voice, it’s a deadly potent combination.

The disc was reissued a few years ago with a bonus disc of demo tracks.  The demos are surprisingly rich (they’re not at-home recordings or done without accompaniment) so they don’t differ that dramatically from the originals.  But they have a slightly less polished feel, which doesn’t hurt the band at all. There’s also a demo of the fantastic “For Those…” which doesn’t appear on the original disc.

I have to thank my friend Lar for getting me into this band. (Thanks Lar).

[READ: October 19, 2009] McSweeney’s #32

The concept for this issue is this: McSweeney’s asked several authors to “travel somewhere in the world–Budapest, Cape Town, Houston, any sleepy or sleepless outpost they could find–and send back a story set in that spot fifteen years from now, in the year 2024.”

And so, all of the stories are vaguely sci-fi-ish in that they are future related, but they are all grounded very heavily in reality, in particular, the reality of individuals trying to live in this future world.

ANTHONY DOERR-”Memory Wall”
This is the longest story in the collection.  And I thought to myself, I don’t think I care all that much about an old white woman in South Africa.  But I have to say, I was utterly engaged by this story.  It was fantastic.  The premise is that in the future, you are able to retrieve and then store your memories on little cards.  You can then re-watch them at any time.  Obviously a black market in other people’s memories quickly develops.

The story features an old woman who is slowly losing her memory.  She uses these memory card treatments to try to retain any sense of her life with her now-deceased husband.  Her husband happened upon a fantastic discovery just before he died.  She doesn’t care about this, she just wants to remember their life.  But when word of his discovery leaks out (the discovery was pretty monumental, and rumors about it spread quickly), an opportunist tries to piece together this discovery by watching her old memories.

What is so cool about this story is that with memories floating in different people’s heads, the story is able to follow different characters around the story.  The old woman , the young opportunist, even the older black man who was her servant (and the man’s son) all have their lives in the spotlight.  And as we get each of their perspectives, the story grows in depth.

The ending scene features generosity from an unexpected source which is unabashedly touching.  This was a truly wonderful story.

WELLS TOWER-”Raw Water”
This story is set in the American desert.  And it offers a water solution that seems like a good idea and a plausible solution.  Pipe water from the  Pacific ocean into a newly created lake in the desert.  This provides a body of water to build towns around; when some of the water evaporates, the clouds will rain the evaporated water onto the dry land.  It’s a great idea.

Except when it doesn’t work.  As it doesn’t here.

Rodney and Cora are traveling across country from Boston to this desert so that Cora can photograph the lake.  The lake is now bright red (because of the plankton and other organisms that thrive in this water body).  The new landscape has a complicated effect on Rodney and Cora, where this vast expanse gets Rodney a little stir crazy.

I enjoyed this story a lot (Wells Tower is becoming a favorite short story writer of mine).  The ending section of the story got a little creepy, and so the story wound up gong in a direction I did not expect, but it was not altogether implausible.  I admit that I missed Cora in the last few pages, which I think is a bit of a flaw, and yet overall the story was very satisfying.

CHRIS BACHELDER-”Eighth Wonder”
This story is set in, I think, Houston (lots of references to Sam Houston, so I assume that’s the locale).  It is set in (what I assume is) the Astrodome.  At any rate, it is set in a dome.  The city has flooded and people are taking refuge there.  People are trying their best to make do with what they have.  But one man, who has been reading the fliers about the dome, decides to make things better.  This is a story of the human spirit and it was quite moving.  Despite the obvious sadness (and parallels to Hurricane Katrina), it was still uplifting.

CHRIS ADRIAN-”The Black Square”
A black square has appeared on Nantucket Island.  If anything enters the square, it never comes back.  And so, people are choosing it as a way to end their current life.  (No one knows for certain what happens when they go into the Square, so they aren’t necessarily committing suicide).  Henry (and his former lover’s dog, Hobart) travel to Nantucket (where he grew up).  Henry is planning to enter the square (there’s a back up plan for Hobart, yes).

But what happens when he meets an interesting, warm and sweet man there?  Can he really get over his former lover?  This was another really strong story.  It begins with you, the reader, not liking Henry, (he has ceased caring about niceties and is awfully rude to a number of people) but as the story progresses, he grows stronger, more complicated and very sympathetic.  A great piece.

J. ERIN SWEENEY-”Oblast”
This story conflates two interesting ideas into one story.  The first is that humanity is being contaminated by a seal virus.  This has naturally led to a wholesale slaughter of seals everywhere (especially of those in captivity).  To protect the seals, organizations have been transporting them out of aquaria and into the open sea where at least they stand a chance (however slim) of survival.

The other story concerns two boys.  Their father has recently become the brutal dictator of a newly formed country, Karabakh.  And the boys have fled to the States.  The boys’ immigration status is in question, but if they are sent back to their homeland, they will surely be killed.  The boys, like the seals, must be sent to a neutral location, where they may or may not survive.  Each boy is different, so the conflict between them only complicates their situation.  And putting them both in a confined space (with seals who may have a virus) has really exacerbated the troubles.

I didn’t know if I’d like this one when it started (there’s a lot of naval/sea talk, which is not my thing), but it proved to be a really great story.

SHEILA HETI-”There is No Time in Waterloo”
This piece is set in Waterloo.  (Although which Waterloo, I don’t know).  As of 2024, Blackberry has created The Mother of all Blackberrys which can essentially predict not your future, but your destiny.  And so everyone consults their Mothers all the time to see what they should do.  There were some interesting things going on here (especially when one of the girls breaks her Mothers and is effectively ostracized) but I couldn’t get emotionally involved in the story.

HEIDI JULAVITS-”Material Proof of the Failure of Everything”
This story is set in Hungary after the collapse of their economy.  Because Hungary had been loaned money from German banks, it transpires that a German banker effectively owns the country.  In a shady deal, he “sold” the country to a rather questionable individual, known as the Visla.  The Visla has decreed that Hungary made the wrong choice in 1989 and so he has insisted that the entire country, buildings and all, be returned to the state they were in, in 1989. This is the Deszecesszionist movement.

The protagonist of the story, Gyula is a spy for Bela (who works for the Visla).  And essentially Gyula’s job consists of listening to people in a particular hotel (whether they are guilty or not) because they have to eavesdrop on someone.  But what happens when Bela is no longer around?  How will Gyula find work?

I loved the tortured and hilarious prose that Juvalits used in this story (especially as it opens).  The turns of phrase were just slightly off, and they made the story very memorable.  It also made you have to slow down a bit to fully read the words.  Very enjoyable (and very twisted as the story reaches it end).

JIM SHEPARD-”The Netherlands Lives with Water”
Yes, this story is about flooding in the Netherlands.  The narrator  is a geologist (or some future variant of a geologist) who knows that the Netherlands is doomed.  His wife, Cato, is a media liaison whose job is to paint a happy face on the eventual doomedness of the Netherlands.  This is definitely the least hopeful story of the bunch.

It begins as rather clinical and somewhat technical, but by the end the emotions come through.  But what makes the story really compelling is the interpersonal dynamics of the main characters.  He is, basically, emotionally stunted when it comes to talking to his wife.  And watching them fight about this, yet stay close because of all of the chaos, keeps the story centered amidst the storm.

SALVADOR PLASCENCIA-”The Enduring Nature of the Bromidic”
This story covers a lot of ground, although it doesn’t appear to be set in the future.  The story focuses on Gonzalo who is studying geology but whose grant keeps getting denied because the government believes he is making too much money.  His wife Cheli is also an academic, and she is writing a paper about the enduring nature of the bromidic, and since her area of focus is television, she sums up her thesis: everyone loves reruns.

There is also a lot of discussion about the reintegration of English into California (which I guess shows that it is set in the future).

But the story really centers around this family’s attempts to thrive against the difficulties of paperwork and the social security administration.  There was even a little bit of fun with bureaucracy as the story ended.  I found the story a little difficult to follow in the beginning (I wasn’t always clear who was who, especially since names are changed on purpose) but it was definitely enjoyable by the end.

But the thing I enjoyed most about this story was saying the authors name: PlahSENceeahhh.

SESSHU FOSTER-”Sky City”
This story had such a great concept: the chaotic winds and storms in future L.A. have pulled people and cars and all manner of things into what they are calling a sky city.  Many people don’t think it exists (but how else to explain cars falling from the sky?)

Two people are going to try and fly to it.  In a homemade zeppelin.  And the set-up of the story is that their entire conversation is being broadcast over pirate radio station.

The only problem I had with the story is that the two characters in the zeppelin really aren’t very interesting.  One (the guy who makes the zeppelins) is an anarchist, the other (the woman who is learning to fly it and who has the radio transmitter) is a communist who sells communist newspapers on the street corner.  Both characters are strident and unflinching in their devotion to opposing society.  But the state of society is such that there doesn’t seem to be much left to overthrow.  Much of the beginning of the story is spent with the two characters arguing back and forth about ideology and his ex-girlfriend.

I just wanted to hear more about Sky City.

There was a lot of cool stuff about the zeppelin (and about how abandoned malls allowed him to build it in secret).  There was also some cool descriptions of flying silently over a sleeping city.  Ultimately, the payoff was rewarding, although, really, I would have liked to have seen more.

–

So overall this was another enjoyable issue.  The artificial constraint on the stories led to some interesting concepts that probably wouldn’t have come out otherwise.  But despite the constraint, the authors chose to focus on the lives of the people, rather than just future events.  And so, the stories are intriguing as well as engaging.  And you can’t ask for much more than that.

[WATCHED: August-October 2009] Clash of the Gods

[UPDATE: October 26, 2009]

I have now finished the entire series.  I was pleasantly surprised by how much I learned from it.  (Not that I considered myself an expert, but you never know what you’ll get from TV series). The biggest surprise was how much this series filled in the gaps of things I half knew, or things that I didn’t know were missing from my knowledge.  Can’t ask for more than that!

I’m still a little confused by the inclusion of Tolkien, but that’s okay, it was a good episode nonetheless.

General negatives: I never did get used to the egregiously repetitive imagery (if I never see Zeus pulling off his hood again, I’ll be thrilled).  I also got rather tired of that crazy howling wind/scream noise that they used as some kind of dramatic effect.  But hey, that’s okay.

The actors and the CGI and all that was fine.  They had to include some kind of footage or else it would just be people talking to us, right?  I wonder where they got the actors?  The women were all quite beautiful. The men were less handsome than I would have expected (but then the male gods were all old, right?).  How did they cast these episodes, I wonder?  Okay Zeus: can you sit in that throne?  Good.  Can you remove your hood? Good. Athena: Can you stare smoldering at the camera?  Good.  I wonder how people tried out for the part of “soul writhing in hell” or whatever it was.

I’m not sure if the “that was the myth, but how does it relate to reality” part was supposed to be the real draw of the show.  Some of it was interesting, some of it was weird, and some of it was just stretching plausibility.  There’s been a lot if discussions below in the comments about the emphasis on Christianity throughout the series.  From a historical point of view I thought it was interesting.  Although there were time when I wasn’t entirely convinced.

It was the professors who really impressed me.  They were consistently informative, and clearly enjoyed what they were talking about.  There were one or two who I would NEVER have wanted in class (their voices were rather sharp) but there were also a few that I would have signed up for multiple times, no question. So thanks to them for doing the show (I know, it was a real drag for them to get out of the classroom and do TV, right).

I’m still trying to find more information about the people involved, but it is cleverly hidden (as is everything else about the show).  What is it with The History Channel’s website?  This is the only professor who I’ve found with a blog: Wormtalk and Slugspeak.  And he tells some interesting details about doing the show.  As for the rest, well, you’ll have to watch the episode and write down their names, apparently.

I’ll give a special shout out to the professor at Rutgers, since she’s just down the street, but i don’t remember her name.

[UPDATE: October 26, 2009]

See bottom for comments on final two episodes that i watched: Thor and Medusa (which I missed the first time around).

[UPDATE: October 15, 2009]

See bottom for comments about Beowulf and Tolkien.  (I haven’t watched Thor yet).

[UPDATE: September 28, 2009]

See bottom for comments about the Odyssey episodes.

[UPDATE: September 21, 2009]

I’ve been getting a number of hits here with people looking for the Clash of the Gods narrator.  So, his name is Stan Bernard.  He was also the narrator for Zero Hour and MonsterQuest as well as a few other things.  I’ve not seen anything else he’s done.

[UPDATE: September 2, 2009]

See bottom for reviews of 2 more episodes]

[WATCHED: August-October 2009]

I don’t normally review TV shows.  There’s just too much to keep up with.  But I’m making an exception in this case.

I had heard about this show on a public radio program.  The host was talking to some of the guys who were involved in making it, and it sounded fantastic. (I regret that I don’t know which host or even which radio station, I was driving a rental car and just happened upon the program, I think his name was John, which, frankly doesn’t help at all).

I love Greek mythology, and so did the host of the radio show.  When he said that the series was designed not only for people who are new to the mythology but that it would also give deeper information for those who were familiar with the stories, I has to check it out.

Two episodes have aired so far, Zeus and Hercules.  And the radio announcer was right.  The episodes are good.  They give the general story of the myth and then throw in some uncommon details.  But, perhaps most interestingly, they also include ways in which recent archaeological digs have uncovered information that shows the reality behind the stories.  And, even more interestingly, they discuss how some of the myths not only correspond very well to actual historical events, but also correspond to events from the Bible and other cultures’ mythologies.  So, Noah’s flood, is recounted in Greek mythology as a Zeus destroying the world.  And both are based on what is believed to be a real event in which a volcano erupted and flooded most of the Middle East.  The parallels are uncanny.

The stories (narrated by a frankly uninspired narrator) are interspersed with my favorite part: faculty from various universities (and Scientific American magazine) give their historical insight into the myths.  And they’re all pretty excited about what they’re talking about (and each has his or her own quirky mannerism which is fun to look for–and they were all apparently told to wear black, otherwise it is an amazing sartorial coincidence).

The absolute worst part of the series (and I fear it will continue through all  of the shows since it was in Zeus and Hercules) is the absolutely horrid “reenactment” footage.  It’s bad enough that the footage is kind of lame (even if the blue contacts do “pop” on screen as they said they would in the radio interview).  But they reuse the same footage over and over again in the same episode–heck in the same segments of the same episode.  It is maddening.  Are they really telling us that they couldn’t have had Zeus do something other than sit down heavily on his rocky throne?  (I think they showed that particular scene 6, maybe 7 times).  I realize that if the actor isn’t actually going to speak, there’s not a lot he can do, but come on, show us something else!

And the “fast,” “exciting” editing is just annoying.  Hey, I get it, Zeus has spooky eye color!  I don’t need you to zoom in on it 12 or 13 times during the episode.  Or to try to make the same footage you’ve shown us look more interesting by having it go slightly out of  focus.

Oh and in Hercules, we learn that Hera is behind all of the 12 challenges that Hercules must face.  But you know what, you don’t have to show that same scene of her skulking around, or the close up of her own colored contacts, ever time you mention her name.  I mean, you’ve got these actors, and they’re all made up.  You probably had them on set for several hours.   I’ll bet you could have them make several DOZEN expressions, not just one.  Or, they could even walk around different places.

The reenactments (which feature CGI that is okay but nothing special, but which is also repeated and repeated and repeated (how many times must I watch Hercules get plastered with the same blood?)) are just really bad.  It’s like watching Cops.  These men and women simply cannot emote in an even remotely convincing way.  In the sequence in Hercules when they talk about Eurystheus, the king of Tiryns who sets up his challenges, they show the same shot of the king looking (haughtily? thoughtfully? slyly?) at the camera in a closeup. (So even when they say he is shocked by Hercules’ completion of a task, it’s the same footage of him looking (pensively?) into the camera.  I can’t find an image online, but if you watch the episode on the website, you’ll see it.  A lot.)

It is so frustrating that I actually find myself turning away from the screen because I don’t want to see the zoom in on Zeus’ eye again, or the footage of the hydra re-growing its head for the 4th time.

I have never really watched anything on the History Channel before.   I know some people claim that that’s all they watch, but hey, history’s not really my thing.  (Actually, that’s not true, I love history, I just don’t like TV depictions of it).  So, I don’t know if this is the way History Channel shows are done, if all of their reenactments are just lame.  If so, then I feel justified in never watching the channel before.  If not, then this series does a real disservice to the topic with this irritating style.

Having gone on and on and on and on about this, I will say that I completely enjoyed the information presented.  I was totally fascinated by Zeus, and I really enjoyed the Hercules story (he’s a character that I’ve never given much thought to before, and I learned an awful lot).  I fully intend to watch the remaining episodes in the series.

And here I have to complain about the History Channel’s website for the show.  It tells you absolutely NOTHING about the show.  You can watch the most recent episode there, but just try and find out how many there are or when they’re on next and you’ll just beat your head against a wall.  Who thinks that’s useful?

In fact, it’s hard to find anything about this show online anywhere.  It’s like they’re ashamed of it or something.   I had to find another blog (from someone who is on the show) just to get this schedule:

* Zeus 8/3
* Hercules 8/10
* Odyssey(1) 8/17
* Odyssey(2) 8/24
* Hades 8/31
* Medusa 9/7
*Thor 9/14
*Lord of the Rings 9/21
* Minotaur 9/28
* Beowulf 10/5

* means the episode has aired already.
And I finally figured out how to navigate their site (more or less).  It looks like the final two episodes coming up are:
Oct 5 is Monsters of Middle Earth (!) and
Oct 12 is Thor.
And that should be the end of the series.

I’m especially excited about the Odyssey episodes (there’s so much great stuff there) and Medusa.  I’m not so sure about the Lord of the Rings, although I’ll bet it’s quite good too.

So thank you historians and producers for giving us this excellent look at mythology.  But next time, film a few extra sequences, please.

[UPDATE: September 2, 2009] Hades & Minotaur

The Hades episode, while suffering from many of the same problems the others faced (excessive reuse of footage) had this dreadful first: excessive re-use of footage from another episode (yes, the reused a lot of the same shots from the Zeus episode to show Hades in Chronos’ belly).  Having gotten that out of the way though, the Hades episode was especially good because it incorporated several other myths as well: Sisyphus and Orpheus.   This was great because, really the Hades story isn’t all that interesting once the basics are out of the way: he guards The Underworld.  But showing the people who tried to escape really made the episode shine.

Minotaur.  I was pretty excited about the Minotaur episode because, well, who doesn’t love the minotaur?  But the episode felt a little too long; like with Hades, maybe the Minotaur should have had other things in it too?   I have to say, I hope I never see the footage of that beard/teeth shot again. Why did they have to show it 25 times?  (No, I didn’t count.)    I think there’s a Mystery Science Theater joke about “well, we’ve got the set, we might as well use it.”  And that’s how this episode felt: we’ve got 4 seconds of screaming people and fake blood splattering, we may as well use them. I wish someone had told the producers how cheap it makes the episode look.  Anyhow, the first half of the episode was pretty cool, learning about the myth and the caves below Crete.  (And I liked learning about the origin of the word “clue”).  But I got kind of bored by the end.

[UPDATE: September 28, 2009] The Odyssey (Parts One and Two) or as the call them: Odysseus: Curse of the Sea and Odysseus: Warrior’s Revenge

I’ve read The Odyssey twice so I was pretty intrigued by the prospect of this two-parter.  And I think this has been my favorite episode (or two) of the bunch.  They didn’t rely too much on the crazy repetition (although there were a lot of shots of Penelope with the lurking suitors), and the story was told rather completely.

I appreciated a lot of the background insight that the lecturers gave and even some of the “researchers have recently found” segments.  The weird thing about this for me was that even though I had always known of this as a story, a fable, I always assumed that the events were based on something (whether or not the Cyclops explanation is real, I don’t know, but I never thought the story was pulled out of thin air).  But evidently scholars are just now starting to think that it was actually based on things?  That seems wrong somehow.

I was sort of hoping they would mention the part where Argos, Odyssesus’ dog, having finally seen his master again after twenty years, dies happily.  But they didn’t mention that.   Alas, they stuck to like the main plot points.  But I’m glad they addressed all of the Penelope issues (although who ever thought the suitors were so creepy??) and even the unfaithfulness of Odysseus compared to Penelope.  Seven YEARS with Calypso?  Come on.

I was even intrigued at the part about The Odyssey’s link to Mark’s gospel.  They seem tenuous, but then it’s an interesting idea.

This was good stuff, and one can only hope it will get people interested in the classic tale too (because see how many of the things you already knew about?  Cyclops, Calypso, the Sirens).  I’m looking forward to Beowulf, now.

[UPDATE: October 15, 2009] Beowulf & The Lord of the Rings

Beowulf has always been my least favorite epic.  I have never tried to re-read it since I last read it in high school.  This episode made me want to investigate it again.  I was also shocked to see how much I remembered of the story.

I though the Beowulf episode was particularly good, mostly because it was all new footage, but also because the professors provided some real insights into the story. Although I think I’m getting a little tired of wondering if these mythological characters are real or not.

On the plus side, it was fun seeing new professors, once we moved away from Greek myths.

The Lord of the Rings episode was also pretty great.  I read The Hobbit and LOTR in high school and loved them.  But I haven’t re-read them since.  I also didn’t see the films because I went to the first one in the theater and fell asleep (not because it was bad, but because I was tired going in, which is never a good thing).  So, in my mind the movie was just a lot of walking through dark lands).  I figure I will eventually watch them though.

I appreciated that the actor they got to play Frodo was “not Elijah Wood.”  The guy looked an awful lot like him, but in my opinion, even more Hobbit-like: a little rounder, a little less dynamic, so it worked rather well.  As always, the professors’ insights were great (I also enjoyed hearing them speak Norse (I think it was Norse)).

I remain a little skeptical about this episode in the series only because I don’t think it jibes with the title.  There aren’t really gods in the book (unless you cast the net broadly) and even as a mythos, it doesn’t really fit in with the other tales.  Which is fine, because I still enjoyed it, It just seems out of place.  The other thing that I thought was weird was that the professors and the narrator spoke of a lot of thinks that “this could be what Tolkien meant” but he died in 1973, so it’s not like people couldn’t have just asked him these things.  I mean, the books were successful by then, right?  So, that just rang a little false, like they were trying to keep the style similar to the ancient sagas.

But regardless, the episode was cool (although, ugh, the CGI for Gollum was horrible, he looked like a baby dinosaur from one of my kids’ shows).  And I’m seriously thinking about reading the books again (and maybe the Silmarillion for the first time–I bought it back in high school and read about two pages before giving up).  I absolutely loved finding out that Tolkien created the word mythopoeia, a word I’ve always liked.  However, I’ve always pronounced it Toll-ken, but most of the scholars said Toll-keen (although I noticed that by the end, there was more Toll-ken than Toll-keen).  So, I’m sticking with my lazy way.

I also got a kick out of reading this blog from Michael Drout, one of the speakers on the show.  I especially liked his comments about the Orcs and Wikipedia, and I was delighted to see that they did not undermine his authenticity in favor of Wikipedia.  (He’s the guy who did the cool ancient language reading…which if he ever sees this he can remind me what he said).

Oh, and I just knew that I couldn’t watch a series on The History Channel without seeing black and white footage of wars.  In my mind, The History Channel owns every piece of stock footage about WWI and WWII.  I didn’t expect to see any footage in this series, and yet they managed to squeeze it in!

[UPDATE: October 26, 2009] Thor & Medusa

Thor: I don’t know much about the Norse myths.  Obviously, I had heard of Thor, but beyond the names of a few gods, the rest was new to me.  I was a little disappointed, then, that they put the Tolkien episode first, since some of the stuff from that episode (about the tree theory with Valhalla  and Middle Earth)was then repeated in this episode (which should have been the other way around).  But as for CGI, the sea serpent thing was probably the best looking creature they created.

I really enjoyed the idea that Thor was destined to fight this one monster and there were so many opportunities that went awry.  Destiny is always a fascinating concept.  I also enjoyed the Thor in drag section.  I had never heard of that story before, and the lack of subtlety of having his hammer stolen was really funny.  This episode definitely made me want to investigate the myths more.

Medusa.  I was really looking forward to Medusa, and for some reason, I missed it when it was first on.  So I finally got to watch this middle of the series episode (and it was fun to hear some of the Greek professors again!).  This Medusa episode was really fantastic.

I did not know the Medusa origin story, which was fascinating and cruel.  It’s also interesting to think about it now from a 21st century perspective; what to our minds is a crazy and irrational punishment for (getting raped by Poseidon)–something that was completely not her fault.

What made the episode very cool was that they focused not just on Medusa and her turning people to stone bit.  The episode also gave a lot of time to the Perseus story (he’s the demigod who eventually slays Medusa).  The Perseus story was also chock full of substance and intricacies as well–the whole thing about his mother being forced into a marriage was a fascinating backstory.  This episode was really jam packed.

This actually worked great as a final episode because of its strangely ambiguous ending.  You pity Medusa for her unfair punishment.  But now she is a murdering monster.  Does she deserve to die?  Is death putting her out of her misery?  It was a very cool philosophical ending.

I’m really glad that The History Channel aired this series.

SOUNDTRACK: THE TRAGICALLY HIP-We Are the Same (2009).

I first heard of The Hip when I saw their video for “Nautical Disaster.” This is back in the day when I first got Canada’s MuchMusic on my Brighton, MA cable system, and when I actually watched Music channels. Anyhow, the song was intense and very cool and it built to a great climax, and I was totally hooked.

I got their back catalog and continued to get their new releases.  Since then they’ve released some really good songs, and some pretty good discs.  It almost feels like since their live disc they decided to switch from intense songwriting to more simple, straightforward rock. This is a little disappointing to fans of their intense stuff, and yet if you accept the change in style, the music is quite solid.

So this disc seems to be shooting for an even broader, more commercial appeal.  And, in the first half, at least, they emphasize a more folksy/country feel.  All of this should make me flee from the disc, and I think longtime fans are pretty disappointed by it.  And yet, I can’t get over how much I like it. There’s something slightly off about the Tragically Hip that keeps them from being overtly commercial.  So that even when they release a disc like this, which is quite mellow in places, it still sounds alternative.  Maybe it’s Gord Downie’s voice, maybe it’s something in the melodies; whatever it is, it keeps this disc from being blah.

The final track, Country Day” seems to sum up the overall feel of the disc: meandering country roads.  And “Queen of the Furrows” is about farming.  The opening few songs have a Neil Young folkish feel, since “Morning Moon” and “Honey Please” have big catchy choruses with folky verses

“Coffee Girl” actually reminds me of a serious Barenaked Ladies type song, which is disconcerting coming from the Hip, but could possibly become a hit (it’s probably their most overtly commercial song I can think of since “My Music at Work”).  Actually, I take that back, one of the final tracks on the disc, “Love is  a Curse” sounds like it’s their last ditch attempt to have a big hit in the States.  And if they were a more well known (or on a bigger label) it would be a huge hit.  It rocks pretty hard and screams radio friendly.

The Hip of old do surface on two songs though: “Now the Struggle Has a Name” is one of those great sounding Hip songs:  as you’re singing along to the swelling chorus you wonder why they aren’t huge down here, and then you realize the song is 6 minutes long and will never get on the radio.   There’s also a 9 minute song, and the good news is that it doesn’t get boring (no mean feat).

The second half of the disc has more loud guitars.  The cool riff of “The Exact Feeling” is pretty great.  While “Frozen in My Tracks” is probably the weirdest track on the disc, with a very cool, off-sounding chorus.

So yeah, the disc has horns and strings and is maybe a little too polished and produced.  But the songwriting is still stellar.  I’m sure that if I had heard these songs now without knowing the Hip, I wouldn’t be all that impressed.  Maybe as I get older I’m less critical, or maybe I’m just happy to mellow out a bit more.

[READ: Week of July 20] Infinite Jest (to page 367)

Even though last week I said I would keep to the Spoiler Line Page, I am breaking the promise already.  I just couldn’t stand the thought of leaving a passage unfinished, so I just continued to the section break of Gately’s A.A. meeting.

When I first read IJ way back in 1996 I, like most Americans, didn’t really think too much about Canada.  I liked a lot of Canadian music and The Kids in the Hall were awesome, but beyond that I was pretty oblivious to our neighbors to the north.  Since then, I have become something of a Canuckophile.  I did Curling for two years and have visited up North a number of times.  We even had a Canadian satellite dish where we watched most of our TV (like Corner Gas and The Rick Mercer Report) until that moderately legal company was sued out of business.  Now I subscribe to The Walrus which keeps me well informed. Anyhow, this is all to say that I have a greater understanding of Quebec separatists and the state of US border relations.  This makes this whole Marathe-Steeply section more interesting to me this time around.  I sort of went from Hal (apolitical) to a quarter of the way to Avril in my understanding.

But before we get to that, lets get into the book and learn about Orin.

The first section of the week’s reading is devoted to Orin (and Uncle Charles).  Orin was a decent tennis player at E.T.A., but he peaked around age 13.  From there he sort of drifted off the rankings (which, we are told is quite relative) and despite being in the mid #70s ranking-wise (and therefore not making the Top 64 of most tournaments) was still heavily courted by colleges (ranking being relative and all).

He decided to go to college rather than going pro (and we get a lengthy look at Avril’s aggressive campaign to have absolutely no impact on Orin’s decision, going so far as to leave a room when he enters it).   Orin ultimately settled on Boston University for its feeling of being away from home without actually being very far from home (and for the free ride, room and board and living expenses he received.)

Uncle Charles was somewhat instrumental in arranging this windfall.  But, as he himself magnanimously puts it (on every occasion he gets to speak in public) he didn’t come down here from Canada for Thank Yous.  He came down to E.T.A. from New Brunswick and the tiny Throppinghamshire Provincial College to be there for his family, to fill in where he was needed, for how could Avril possibly take over as headmaster (and be called a what? a (gasp)  headmistress) when she has to think about academics and about keeping her house clean and blah blah blah. It’s quite a funny speech (given in the middle of the open tennis courts where he is often drowned out by fans and flying garbage).

When we return to Orin’s story we learn that he decided freshman year to give up tennis and switch to football.  And the reason was two-fold.  He had literally burned out on tennis.  But he had also fallen head over heels for a baton-twirling, pep squad cheerleader.  Not a single college male, senior footballers included, had the courage to speak to this young woman, so gorgeous was she.  Some might say she was the Prettiest Girl of All Time.  For yes, it was Joelle van Dyne who won Orin’s heart and made him want to switch sports (to one where they actually had baton-twirling, pep squad cheerleaders).

But it turned out he was not suited for football (since he had a natural aversion to getting hit).  That is, until the accidental maiming of the team’s current punter gave Orin a chance to kick a football back to the coach (something he had never done before).  And he was magnificent.  We had learned earlier that Orin’s tennis game was almost exclusively based on a killer lob.  And what is a punt but a killer lob.  Once he learned to place his 60-70 yard punts (he was able to hit his staggering tennis lobs onto a coin at the opposing baseline 3 out of 4 times) at the “coffin corner,” he was a local sensation.

DFW details his football passage with as much loving attention as he gives to the tennis section.  He also has some nice references to how the U.S. has been divvied up, with several of the upstate New York schools no longer in existence (and more references to New New York).

It was actually the P.G.O.A.T. who approached him first.  For an autograph for her own Personal Daddy [and, no I have not figured out what this phrase means yet.  In the earlier movie theater section where her own Personal Daddy is mentioned, I found the hands in laps bit to be a little uncomfortable.  Am I the only one who thought that?].  Orin and Joelle hit it off immediately, meeting each others’ parents and generally falling in capital L love.

When Joelle decided to switch majors to Film-Cartridge Theory, Orin tried to introduce her to indie films rather than the films that she liked which were ones where they “blow shit up.”  This inevitably led to a meeting with Himself.  James found her intriguing, and asked her to be in his films.  And soon she was spending the bulk of her time with Jim.  It was only that Orin believed she was not interested in acting that he didn’t flee this awkward relationship.

During this time, Joelle was also learning the fine art of filming.  She was using better quality cameras, moving from b&w to color and even to sound.  Her main subject was Orin, while he was punting.  As their relationship grew strained, Orin would watch footage of himself, by himself, over and over, delighting in everything that he could see.

[This leads to the second thing that I remember so distinctly about the book.  The first reference to the Storrow 500 (albeit it is only one line so far)].

We move, briefly, to a very disturbing passage about Poor Tony Krause.  After stealing a woman’s heart (nice callback!), he can no longer dress Fine.  And he is wearing cast offs and other disgusting clothes.  He is also wanted by Emil Minty (of the Ennet House section and, woah, see a few paragraphs down).  All of his connections have abandoned him (or he’s afraid of them)–even Bridget Tenderhole has been shipped away by her pimp.  We go step by step through Poor Tony’s Withdrawal from heroin: his life in a dumpster (literally) and then living in a stall at the Watertown Library (although I must disagree here–certainly they have a cleaning staff in the bathrooms every, or every other, morning?).

There’s a lot of Zuckung (twitch) in this section.  Finally, Poor Tony, planning to go to the same Nucks who sold Pemulis the DMZ (the Antitois) has a seizure on the Gray Line and, I believe, dies.

At this point, I decided to go back and re-read the Clenette and yrstruly sections.  And they made more sense.  So, for my own peace of mind:

Clenette is the half sister of Wardene.  Wardene is dating Reginald.  Wardene’s mom (who is crazy) thinks that she is seducing her stepfather/mother’s boyfriend Roy Tony and so beats her with a wire hanger.  Roy Tony is Wardene’s real father’s brother.  Reginald promises Wardene that he will beat up Roy Tony, but Roy Tony has already killed a man, so he’s pretty badass.  He killed Columbus Epps over Clenette’s mom in an act of passion.  Clenette herself is friends with Dolores Epps (Columbus’ daughter), and they play together in front of their apartments.

Meanwhile, in the yrstruly section: yrstruly, Poor Tony and C (who we learn in the later section is actually Bobby C (I don’t THINK we have a full story about him yet).  We are also introduced to Susan T. Cheese and Lolasister (who later cannot be trusted). And we learn that Stokely Darkstar has AIDS (and dies soon thereafter).  Bobby C dies from laced heroin [I mentioned the rest of that section in the previous week's write up].

But the important thing about going back is that this later Poor Tony section reveals that Emil Minty is yrstruly who has left the street and has been unseen for months (because he is is Ennet House).

This sad sequence is followed by one of great humor back at E.T.A.  We learn a few things about some of the prorectors and the Saturday classes that they are forced to teach.  Most of the classes are a joke, although some students develop  a fondness for the insanity.  Schacht takes every crazy class offered by Mary Ellen Thode who once tried to form a tennis organization that would be organized, run, played and ultimately watched only by members of the Female Objectification Prevention and Protection Phalanx.  I adored the title of her class: “Toothless Predators: Breast Feeding as a Sexual Assault.”  As well as her request that you “Keep Your Answers Brief and Gender Neutral”

During a quiz that Schacht is taking, Troeltsch [and yes, I have a hard time keeping some of these kids straight with all the "ch's" in their names] is announcing the results of the PWTA debacle over the schools PA system.  This section gets increasingly funny as Troeltsch becomes more and more graphic with his synonyms for “beat” and “was beaten by.”  This clearly goes on for a long time (in E.T.A time) as there are so many players.   And just when you think he’s done with all of the players and the crazy flourishes, another paragraph-full comes along.  Troeltsch gets to do the sports announcing because he practically begged to be able to do it (visions of Troeltsch trying on his blue blazers and practicing into his hand crop up a lot).

Another prorector is (saluki-faced) Thierry Poutrincourt.   Hal is taking her [isn't Thierry a boy's name?] “Separatism and Return: Quebecois History from Frontenac through the Time of Interdependence.”  (Interdependence Day being November 8th).  Hal is basically apolitical and doesn’t care much about Quebec Separatism either way.  However, having some background in French speaking (and a Quebecker mom) Hal has become rather intrigued by this class, and actually finds it a challenge (although that is mostly because of the guttural Quebecker French Poutrincourt speaks).

This section about Poutrincourt contains the infamous Endnote 110, which is 14 pages long. The first part is a letter from Avril to Orin (care of the New Orleans Saints) which is very funny in what she says, and in the footnotes attached to the Endnotes.  I was particularly amused that her Greeting to Orin is “Dear Filbert”, which gets an a footnote. You then flip through several pages looking for the end of Endnote 110 to finally find the small a and the footnote says “Don’t ask.”

We also get a nice look at Avril’s grammarian side as she is trying to get all of the supermarket chains to change their Express Line signs from 10 Items or Less to the grammatically correct 10 Items or Fewer. [I can remember reading this back in 1996 and then noticing that in Bread & Circus (bought by Whole Foods in 1992), the express lines did, in fact, say Fewer.  And I wondered if maybe DFW changed the world a little.  I have not consciously noted whether other stores have changed.]

Avril gets a form letter (and a photo of Orin) as a reply.  (Which the later conversation between Hal and Orin reveals is actually sent by Orin himself, and not Jethro Bodine, as the note is signed).

The Endnote also contains another hilarious phone exchange between Orin and Hal.  In his first answering machine message to Hal, Orin notes that all Emily Dickinson poems can be sung to the “Yellow Rose of Texas” (which is not true….  I assume that DFW didn’t come up with this connection first, but I can’t find an origin for it).  When Hal calls back, Orin gives him Speedy Seduction Strategy #7 for picking up women (wear a wedding band).

The phone call eventually gets around to what is really bothering Orin, which is a question regarding Quebec separatists and their sudden change of protocol.  Historically, Quebec separatists protest against Ottawa, yet now they are attacking O.N.A.N. instead.  If they want independence from Canada, why should they care about the state of O.N.A.N.?  And but really, all of the Quebec attacks on O.N.A.N. have been quite minor up until now.  There’s the mirrors on I-87 in New New York which make motorists think that a car is coming towards them so they veer off a cliff.  But that’s minor terrorism, along the lines of draping fleur de lis on statues.

Couldn’t, Orin asks, Quebec offer to annex the Concavity (or Convexity depending on which country you are in) and say, we’ll take this burden from you if you let us be independent?  There is a whole lot more to this endnote, but that’s the nutshell.

And so why does Orin suddenly care about all this?  Well, his interviewer Helen Steeply is positing these ideas, possibly in relation to Jim– (just as we get to the really crucial part of the phone call, Pemulis hangs up the phone so they can go smoke a DuBois in the parking lot).

Orin also asks for a definition of samizdat, which Hal supplies as a form of Soviet underground propaganda.  This word pops up conveniently enough in the forthcoming Marathe/Steeply section as well.

After this section we get a touching (and a little disgusting) look at just what Mario Incandenza looks like (poor guy).  Suffice it to say that he is physically a wreck in every conceivable and many inconceivable ways, and yet mentally, he is not that bad.  Just a little slow on the uptake.  And, despite occasional taunting, he is generally quite well regarded at E.T.A. and beyond.  He brings his specially outfitted camera with him on his many walks and has even had some of his photos placed in local shops.

And although Hal feels that Moms has more love/respect for Mario than him (which is untrue), Hal clearly loves his brother, feeling that he, Mario, is truly brave and amazing for everything that he has been through.  And, Hal also once told the guy from the U.H.I.D. (who was trying to recruit Mario) to get lost.

The endnotes in this Mario section were fascinating for saying things like: “overshot the place to mention…” as if he (who?) were writing too quickly to include the note.  Man these endnotes are great!

And speaking of Avril.  We get an occasional glimpse into her behavior with her sons.  She seems to love them without question and tries very hard not to let her personal beliefs or opinions influence them in any decision they make.  She tries to leave Mario alone, so as not to  seem like an overly concerned mother, and we already saw how she acted with Orin.  This all comes across as slightly flaky, and probably a but too hands-off in terms of parenting.  But it seems like her heart is in the right place.

And from the Mario section, when he is helping out Jim with the films, we learned that Joelle had a veil on back then as well, so the veil has nothing to do with Jim’s death or IJ (V) evidently.

On to Marathe and Steeply (its been a while!).  They are still on the mountainside, discussing the virtues/vices of freedom in the U.S.A.  And their argument boils down to yes, even though the Entertainment is American made, it was disseminated by the Wheelchair Assassins as an attempt to show how complacent and childish Americans are.  The plot thickens.

And then, we finally learn about Eschaton (coming from Eschatology, the study of the end of the world).  Eschaton is a tennis based game in which 8-12 players take up various spots (coinciding with countries on the map) across 4 tennis courts.  Each of 400 balls is considered a bomb.  Players make up different countries, with articles of clothing representing tactical locations.

In this explanation of the game, we get the notorious Endnote 123.  This Endnote is probably the first thing in the book that I did not fully comprehend and will not investigate further as it is a Pemulis’ high tech math formula for calculating Mean Value w/r/t Eschaton.  And yet, don’t skip the footnote because despite the math, it is very funny.  It is “dictated” by Pemulis to Hal and is consequently written in Pemulis-speak, with digressions and (sic)s included.  It also has the funny note that graph b is called HALSADICK.  But, more important than that, this Endnote seems to give light to my enduring question of who is writing this book.  Pemulis laughs that Hal is trying to write the endnote in third person.  And since most of the notes are in third person, is it safe to assume that Hal is the one writing them?  Is Hal the author of the entire piece?  This would also explain the highfalutin language since Hal is an OED guru….  And yet….

Click here for fun!

The full Eschaton game passage is very lengthy and very convoluted so I’m not even going to attempt to summarize it.   Suffice it to say that the game is meant to simulate real-world end-of-the-world situations as best as possible and that there are rules that must govern play.  Prior to each game, the circumstances of the end of the word scenario are broached and sides are drawn up.  I will mention a few key players in today’s match, though: Ann Kittenplan (another great name) who is a beefy young girl with a mustache better than Hal’s; Todd “Postal Weight” Possalthwait; and the ever-hated Ingersoll are awaiting a decision from Otis P. Lord (who is playing the role of God).

The beginning of this passage is dull and very technically detailed (as is the game itself). As the game degenerates, the pacing gets faster but the details never subside.  And things gets funnier as they get more manic.  [And anyone who enjoyed the "seeing everything at once" writing style of this section should totally read DFW's story "Mr. Squishy"].  For instance, we learn that Pemulis hates the Penn family (J.J. Penn is also on the court) because his older brother called him “penisless” and convinced him that if he pushed on his belly button his ass would fall off.

As snow falls (and as Hal, Pemulis, Trolescth, Schatch and Axford (who we learn is missing one and a half fingers, as of exactly 3 years ago this Interdependence Day (do we assume it is firework related?)), watch (with a  DuBois in hand), Ingersoll decides to throw the rulebook out the window and hits a ball right at Kittenplan’s head.  Pemulis goes berserk because this will undermine the entire concept of the game (people are not valid targets).  Lord switches from a white beanie to a red beanie (which means Utter Global Crisis).  While words are exchanged, and tempers flare, Kittenplan escapes her holders and fires (what the narrator humorously notes is) an already spent warhead at Ingersoll. This encourages others to do the same and mayhem ensures.  The final insult of the mayhem is that two kids crash into the serving cart which houses the computer that Lord uses to calculate the day’s game.  As Lord tries to catch the flying PC, he trips over Lamont Chu and crashes headfirst into the laptop’s monitor.

There are bound to be serious repercussions for this amount of carnage.

Oh, and the whole time there was a green Ford with advertising for Nunhagen Aspirin idling behind the courts (only Troeltsch noticed it).

Incidentally, all of this Eschaton takes place on Interdependence Day (the only time when the kids have required R&R).  The Interdependence Day chapter headings are subtitled Gaudeamus Igitur.  [According to this site:  James J. Fuld notes: "Gaudeamus Igitur" is regarded as the oldest student song and as the embodiment of the free and easy student life.  There's an audio file of the song here.]

The final section (and the one that drifts into possible spoiler-type areas) is an in-depth look at a Boston A.A. meeting.  This section is (surprise) impossibly detailed.  And it begins with a simultaneous Talk by John L. about his experiences and a third person explanation of the trials of an addict and how low he has to get before he can Come In to A.A.  And, of course, a very funny talk from an Irishman about having his first solid turd in years.

As the meeting progresses we get more and more details about Don Gately.  And he gets more and more likable as he Relates to the new people.  We meet his sponsor Ferocious Francis G, a crocodile that Gately had the nerve to talk to.  We also hear of the first time he spoke at an A.A. meeting where he told everyone there that they were fake and the whole thing was bullshit (and how everyone nodded, and appreciated that he had the guts to be so honest).

And, in a Very Special Endnote, we learn that Joelle was not successful in killing herself and that she has been practically Fed Exed to Ennet House under close supervision of Pat.  And as the section continues (and we are definitely in spoiler area for this week here), we get to see all of the folks from Ennet House accompanying Gately to this White Flag meeting:

Ken Erdedy (he’s back!) is there, (he’s a yuppie and is in rehab for pot).
Kate Gompert (she’s back!) is there (she admits that she is in for pot, too) and is still on suicide watch.
Tiny Ewell, Nell Gunther, Wade McDade, Chandler Foss, Jennifer Belbin, Emil Minty, Geoffrey Day and Bruce Green are all there.
And (fanfare) Clenette (who gets a last name) Henderson is now in Ennet House too.  It’s like something of a touching reunion at this point.

And then we get a crack in Gately’s armor, and this is how I know I like him.  When Joelle criticizes the Program’s cliche of “There but for the Grace of God” as subjunctive and meaningless (which on a linguistic scale I totally agree with), the fact that he has to look at her veil and not her face, and the fact that he completely shuts down and actually fears that his silence means that he will definitely get high again was really wrenching for me.  For how do you know what to say to someone when you can’t see their expression?  It’s worse than email because the person is right there and can see you!  I can feel the bottom drop out from under him.

And it’s scary.

And I think that this A.A. section could be used as the best argument to anyone to stay straight, because the A.A. meetings sound like the worst possible kind of hell that you could end up in.  And like Joelle, I would be very sad if my life took me to a place like that (even if the program did work, I would still be pretty bummed about my life).

But, the fact the Erdedy thinks Joelle is hot because he can’t see her face was pretty fun.

Observations:

I’ve noticed that I hadn’t been paying very close attention to the dates assigned to each section.  This is a bad habit picked up from not knowing the chronology at all.  It hasn’t had too much of an impact, although I can see that a few things would be good to keep straight time-line-wise.  So, I may have to go back and do a little recon work on that.  I noted that the Marathe-Steeply section takes place in April, while the Eschaton is in November.

I also have this weird overarching feeling like no more great revelations will be coming–as if we have settled down from the manic intensity of the first 100 or so pages and now the book is just going to fill in the gaps.  The Eschaton and AA sections, while detailed, were so leisurely paced, that they seemed to calm the whole book down.  Of course, then I realize that we’re less than half way through the book and that there’s a LOT more to come.

And I’m pretty excited about that.

SOUNDTRACK: THE REPLACEMENTS-Hootenanny (1983).

This is the second full length from The Replacements.  For a band that just released two punk albums (one’s an EP), naming your new one Hootenanny is pretty ballsy.  As is the fact that the first track sounds like, well, a hootenanny (even if it is making fun of hootenannies.)

However, the rest of the album doesn’t sound like hootenannies at all.  In fact, the rest of the album is all over the place.  I don’t want to read into album covers too much, but the design has all 16 titles in separate boxes in different colors.  It suggests a little bit of stylistic diversity inside.

Just see for yourself:  “Run It” is a one minute blast of some of the punkiest stuff they’ve done. (It’s about running a red light).  Meanwhile, “Color Me Impressed” marks the second great alt-rock anthem (after “Go”) that Westerberg has put on record.  “Willpower” is a sort of spooky ambient meandering piece that, at over 4 minutes is their longest piece yet.  “Take Me to The Hospital” is a punky/sloppy guitar song.  “Mr Whirly” is sort of an update of the Beatles’ “Oh Darlin.’”  “Within Your Reach” is technically the longest Replacements song to date.  It starts with a cool flangy guitar sound that swirls around a fairly mellow vocal track (this song was featured in the end of Say Anything.  John Cusack cranks the song up past the red line).  “Buck Hill” is an (almost) instrumental.  “Lovelines” is a spoken word reading of personals ads over a bluesy backing track.  “You Lose” is the first song that sounds like another one…a sort of hardcore song.  “Hayday” is a fast rocker like their first album.  And it ends with “Treatment Bound” a sloppy acoustic number that sounds like it was recorded in a tin can.

As you can see, this album is all over the place, and almost every song sounds like they may not make it through to the end.  Yet, despite all of the genres represented, the band sounds cohesive.  The disc just sounds like a band playing all the kinds of music that they like, and the fact that there are a couple of really lasting songs on the disc makes it sound like more than just a bar band.

I feel as though not too many people even know of this disc (it was the last one I bought by them, as I couldn’t find it for the longest time).  But in reading reviews, I see that people seem to really love this disc.  I enjoyed it, and, like other ‘Mats discs, it’s certainly fun, but I don’t listen to it all that often.

[READ: June 9, 2009] McSweeney’s #31

The latest issue of McSweeney’s has a totally new concept (for this journal, anyhow):  They resurrect old, defunct writing styles and ask contemporary writers to try their hands at them. I had heard of only two of these defunct styles, so it was interesting to see how many forms of writing there were that had, more or less, disappeared.

Physically, the issue looks like a high school yearbook.  It’s that same shape, with the gilded cover and the name of the (school) on the spine.

Attached to the inside back cover is McSweeney’s Summertime Sampler. As far as I know this is the first time they have included a sampler of multiple upcoming works.  There are three books sampled in the booklet: Bill Cotter’s Fever Chart; Jessica Anthony’s The Convalescent & James Hannaham’s God Says No. I enjoyed all three of the pieces.  Fever Chart has stayed with me the most so far.  I can still feel how cold that apartment was.  The Convalescent begin a little slow, but I was hooked by the end of the excerpt. And God Says No has me very uncomfortable; I’m looking forward to finishing that one.

As for #31 itself:

The Fugitive Genres Recaptured (or Old Forms Unearthed) include: pantoums, biji, whore dialogues, Graustarkian romances, nivolas, senryū, Socratic dialogues, consuetudinaries, and legendary sagas.  Each genre has an excerpt of an original writing in that style.  Following the sample is the modern take on it.  And, in the margins are notes in red giving context for what the author is doing.  I assume these notes are written by the author of the piece, but it doesn’t say.

I’m going to give a brief synopsis of the genre, but I’m not going to critique either the old piece or whether the new piece fits into the genre exactly (suffice it to say that they all do their job very well).

PANTOUM

A poem composed in quatrains.  They key is that the second and fourth line of the first stanza reappear as the first and third line of the second stanza and so on.  At the end, the first and third lines of the first stanza then reappear as the second and fourth line of the final stanza. Manipulation of the repeated lines is encouraged.  Hard to explain but easy to see once you start reading.

ORIGINAL PANTOUMS:   The example is from an anonymous author (circa 1440 AD) from Malaysia.

I am not a fair critic of poetry.  So I’m just going to say what I thought of them.  As you can imagine, it’s challenging to make these interesting with all that repetition.  And I have to say that the repetition sometimes makes it hard to keep everything straight.

JENNIFER MICHAEL HECHT-”Circus”
I was confused by this one.

BEN JAHN-”Milltown Auspice”
I rather enjoyed this one.

TONY TRIGILIO-”Jack Davis”
This is about Jack Ruby, Oswald and JFK.  It is fascinating to see this historical information (along with, I assume, made up details) done in this style.  Pretty cool.

BILL TARLIN-”Panteentoum”
I was able to follow this one quite easily.  Maybe the simplistic threats and violence promised at senior prom were easy to relate to.

TROY JOLLIMORE-”Gate”
Lyrical and pretty, but I got lost in the meaning.

JOEL BROUWER-”Direct”
A weird poem that kept reasserting ice cream and feces.

NICKY BEER-”Crackpot Arctic Octopus”
A surreal portrait of an underwater carousel.

WALKER PFOST-”The Most Natural Thing in the World”
Again, the violent ones are so easy to follow.  This one is about how the joy of killing people, about 70 in total, is infectious; soon everyone is doing it.

WHORE DIALOGUE

An early type of erotic writing, combining bawdy tales of sexuality with an educational veneer.  The dialogue is usually between a young virgin (often just before her wedding night) and an experienced older, married friend.  There’s usually a section for before and after the wedding, as well.

ORIGINAL WHORE DIALOGUE by NICOLAS CHORIER-”A Dialogue Between a Married Lady and a Maid” (1660 AD). [excerpt]

I was surprised at just how explicit this was!  For even though he typed C–t and P—k, he left in clitoris.  And when Octavia says she can almost thrust her whole hand in, well, imagine my surprise!

MARY MILLER-”A Dialogue Between Two Maids in the Twenty-First Century, One of Whom is Skeezy”
This was really funny and very enjoyable.  It was funny to think of a 21st Century version of this story since the original is written in such an archaic style.  But indeed, they mention Sarah Jessica right away, so you’re pretty assured of the time period.
Ashley has signed a pledge not to have sex till she and Brian are married, but she needs to know from Marci what the dealio is.   The original story’s dialogue seemed stiff (heh heh) and formal, while this one seemed like it could be an actual dialogue between friends.  The middle part discusses Ashley’s new rabbit vibrator.  In the end: The sex is okay, and will no doubt get better.  Despite the discussion of anal sex, the 17th century story was actually more explicit!

LEGENDARY SAGA

Written several hundred years after the events, these sagas chronicled famous Scandinavian adventurers of the tenth century.  They included mythology and cosmic hyperbole.  The lust for fame and glory often comes at the loss of their own life, but that’s a small price to pay, right?

ORIGINAL LEGENDARY SAGA: This excerpt is from an anonymous Icelandic author circa 1310 AD.  It is based on historical figures.

Although I have never read a historical saga before, I knew what to expect: honor, bloodshed and familial pride.

WILL SHEFF-”Black Metal Circle Saga”
The inspiration for this Saga is the Norwegian black metal scene.  In real life, Euronymous of the band Mayhem was stabbed twenty-three times allegedly by Count Grishnackh from the band Barzum.  There were also several church burning around Norway.
The tale is told in several sections, with many of the section having heavy metal titles: War Pigs, Raining Blood etc.
This relates the story of several generations of men who reigned over Vingulmork.  The saga is one of death and revenge.  It would be far too long to recount, but it felt very authentic.  It doesn’t make me want to read more Sagas, but I did enjoy this one.  The supernatural elements were all pretty cool.

BIJI

Biji is sort of a notebook, which contains legends, anecdotes, scientific notes and local wisdom.  Accounts of everyday life mix with travel narratives as well as lists.  It is meant to represent a picture of the culture at the time of writing.

ORIGINAL BIJI (written in China from 220-1912 AD): by DUAN CHENGSHI-”Youyang Zazu”  [excerpt].

Its hard to imagine that this is a “style,” it’s such a mishmash of item.  But at the same time, it’s hard to imagine that ever went out of favor.  The various elements meld together to tell a good story.

DOUGLAS COUPLAND-”Survivor”
Coupland is the ideal writer for this format as, frankly, I think of his work as already very Biji-like.  He throws in excerpts from various things in all of his books: snippets of online code or pictures or other factual elements that place his work at a particular moment in time.
“Survivor” is the story of a man who is part of the film crew for Survivor that’s set on the Kerguelen Islands.  The story was hilarious.  It skewers reality TV, especially as seen from the camera crew (a viewpoint you don’t get too often).  Some of the factual things thrown in include Traveler’s Alerts for diseases, Menus on the CBS Yacht and actual urls for Survivor-type YouTube videos (which are funny to see written out in a story).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWIBp0IrXEE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AzYmJiVDqU (no longer available)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__srsDMKo9k
And when you think that the story is just going to be about the contestants on survivor things take a turn for the worse: A serious disaster hits the outside world, closing airports and rendering everyone helpless.  Will the Survivors survive?  What about our camera crew?  The story turns dark very quickly.

NIVOLA

These seem to have been written exclusively by Miguel de Unamuno.  According to him, a nivola has no plot (or an existential one, anyway) and that it makes itself up as it goes along.  And, really it’s the characters who are doing the work themselves: rebelling against their creator.

ORIGINAL NIVOLA: by MIGUEL DE UNAMUNO-”Mist” (1914 AD) [excerpt].

Surrealness in writing.   I wonder if anyone bought his books.

JOY WILLIAMS-”Saved”
This was a weird (no kidding) piece that I enjoyed quite a lot even if it had no plot to speak of.  Cinnabar’s mother, Snow, [I'm not calling you that name, mother] is an intellectual in town for a conference about Chester Owens.  It’s at the Chester Owens estate although he won’t be in attendance as he is sick.  Lots of platitudinal nonsense is spewn about by intellectuals.  This is, in turn mocked both by Snow and several other characters.

Example: Snow said to no one in particular, “Darwin initially though fish designed their own eyes.”
“Gosh,” someone said, “that fits right in with the talk I’ll be giving after lunch.”

I’m not sure how popular existential novels will ever be.  But as for this one, if you don’t care where it goes, this is an interesting story.

SENRYŪ

These are short unrhymed poems similar to haiku.  They are three lines long and no more than seventeen syllables.  They address human nature rather than the physical world (which is the domain of haiku).

ORIGINAL SENRYŪ: circa 1700s, all anonymous.

Why should haiku
get all the fame?
Senryū are fun too!

NICKY BEER, DAN LIEBERT, DOUGLAS W. MILLIKEN, BYRON LU and CHRIS SPURR all write enjoyable Senryū.  I won’t bother reviewing them, though.

SOCRATIC DIALOGUE

These are discussions between students and a learned elder.  They covered many topics and were set in a place where small talk would be common.

ORIGINAL SOCRATIC DIALOGUE:  by Plato “Republic” (380 BC) [excerpt].

I was a philosophy major, and I studied Plato very thoroughly. I always enjoyed the Socratic dialogue.

DAVID THOMPSON-”After Citizen Kane”
This is a very funny dialogue set in an urban square in the world to come.  In it, Susan Sontag, Franz Kafka, Charlie Chaplin, Virginia Woolf  and Ernest Hemingway discuss that in 2012, Sight & Sound magazine will ask critics and filmmakers to vote for the ten best films ever.  The debate centers around Citizen Kane (and there’s a cameo near the end from Orson Wells).  The discussion is fast and furious, with gentle ribbing and cleverness all over the place.  Thompson a has a great sense of the voices of each of these people.  Charlie Chaplin feels under-represented in the contest; Virigina Woolf always votes on American Idol.  Hemingway thinks Fed Astaire lacks substance.  It’s very enjoyable.

GRAUSTARKIAN ROMANCE

This was a brand of adventure writing set in an around invented countries.   Ruritania was the first but  Graustark was the most popular, with many different authors setting books there.  Despite being written in the early 20th century, they featured Victoria nostalgia with monarchies, princes and damsels in distress.

ORIGINAL GRAUSTARKIAN ROMANCE: by GEORGE BARR McCUTCHEON–”Beverly of Graustark” (1904 AD) [excerpt]

I am fascinated that this fictional world would be used by multiple people.  It would be like setting your new novel in Hobbiton but not getting sued by the estate of Tolkien.

JOHN BRANDON-”Feasts and Villains”
There were two story lines in this piece, and I fear that I got lost with one of them (in fact it seems like that one story line drops of entirely, unless they merge and I missed it). But regardless, I enjoyed this surreal tale. One of the qualities of Graustark (or in this story Graustork) is that only certain people are allowed to go there.  Meaning that nature will keep people away who do not belong.  Dunne is en route there for a very special financial deal.  On the plane he meets Beverly, a young man with no fixed destination who takes a shine to Dunne (much to Dunne’s dismay) and decides to tag along.  Dunne is constantly prevented from completing his travels: the plane is grounded, the bus breaks down, they try on horseback.  He even gets into a duel!
A surprise twist throws a new light onto everything that’s been happening, making this story not only weird but also wonderful.   I don’t imagine this style ever getting fully resurrected but it would be interesting to see what other authors might do with it.

CONSUETUDINARY

These were kept by monasteries in the Middle Ages.  They are detailed instructions for day-to-day life.  They listed everyone’s specific duties; they also kept a record of everything that was to go on in the monastery.

ORIGINAL CONSUETUDINARY: From The House of St. Swithin in Winchester, England (1349 AD)

There’s a reason this style went out of fashion, and why no one would every write one of these today, unless they were in a cloistered monastery.  This was my least favorite genre, and it took me ages to finish.

SHELLEY JACKSON-”Consuetudinary of the Word Church, or the Church of the Dead Letter”
I just could not get into this piece.  Jackson states that she had started the Shelley Jackson Vocational School for Ghost Speakers and Hearing-Mouth Children. The purpose of this school is to talk to the dead.  The consuetudinary covers all of the specific details of this School/Church and all of the various things one must do while in attendance.  It includes a calendar of activities as well as ritual and exercises.  The exercises mostly consist of  eating paper and creating spitballs.  If this was meant to be a parody, it wasn’t terribly funny. If it was meant to be deep, I missed the point.  It was kind of a shame to end with this one, since so many of the other ones were more enjoyable.  But at the same time, it was a thankless challenge to take on this task and try to make it interesting.

Overall, this issue was a lot of fun.  I always like getting introduced to new things (even if they are old things).  I doubt there will be a resurgence of any of these genres anytime soon, but I just flew through the entire book.  This was a cool change of pace from the usual collection of stories.

For searching purposes I include: senryu

SOUNDTRACK: THE DECEMBERISTS-The Hazards of Love (2009).

I first played this disc a few times without really listening to it, just to get a feel for it.  And I was surprised by how heavy it sounded.  The harshest moments of the disc really stood out to me, and I was quite surprised, as I think of the Decemberists as more folky than this.

But when I finally sat down and listened, I was pleasantly surprised at how much I liked the disc overall.  I have yet to understand the complete storyline (the lyrics are printed in a near impossible to read size and color, so I’ve had to rely on what I could pick out.)

The disc is a concept album.  It tells the story of  Margaret who falls for a shape shifting creature of the forest and, I think, their offspring as well.  There’s a jealous forest queen involved, and, of course, the Rake–although I’m not exactly sure how he fits in–but more on him in a moment.

In addition to some “celebrity” guest vocalists (Robyn Hitchcock and Jim James of My Morning Jacket sing backing vocals), for the first time on a Decemberists disc, Colin Meloy doesn’t sing all of the lead vocals.  The two women characters’ parts are sung by two singers I don’t know: Becky Stark (of the band Lavender Diamond) and Shara Worden (of My Brightest Diamond).  And when the queen (Shara Worden) sings, she’s pretty angry. She creates one of the harshest sounds I can think of by the Decemberists.

Interestingly, that song, “The Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid” also contains one of the most beautiful passages that the Decemberists have done.  “The Wanting Comes in Waves” part of the song has an uplifting chorus, a wonderful melody and a beautiful sing-along.  Meanwhile, the “Repaid” part has some harsh, angular guitars and when the Queen repeats “repaid!” for the third time, the hair will stand up on your arms.  (Of course, the song then repeats the beautiful part once again…phew…and it is reprised at the end of the disc, because how could you NOT include that passage again?).

This record also features the catchiest song about infanticide that I know of.  “The Rake’s Song” rocks, and yet as you’re singing along to the simple but catchy chorus of “Alright, Alright, Alright,” you realize that the Rake has just killed all of his three children so that he can have a life as a free bachelor again.  (Revenge does come at the end).

And that revenge comes in one of the 4 versions of the title song.  What starts as a simple folky ditty (in Part 1) “singing, oh ho, the hazards of love,” morphs (in Part 2)  into a rocking track, then (in Part 3) a track with a children’s choir (my least favorite track on the disc–it works with the story, but I don’t care for the kids voices, really) and (finally) a haunting epilogue.

This is The Decemberists’ most striking album to date.  It is a bold attempt to alienate just about everyone, and yet I believe they have pulled off something just shy of a masterpiece.  The harshness of some of the songs still makes me a little uneasy (at least when listening with the kiddies), but the rewards are ample, and they really do fit perfectly with the plot.

I never expected the Decemberists to venture into prog rock territory but since they embraced it fully, they really pulled it off.  I do still need to get in and read the lyrics though, just to get all the details straight.  (They are legibly printed here).

[READ: June 1, 2009] Cat’s Cradle

This is the first “well-known” Vonnegut book I’ve read (not counting Slaughterhouse Five, which I’m going to re-read soon for the first time in fifteen or so years).  I’d heard of this book but never knew what it was about.  And, boy, trying to summarize is pretty tough.

Why?

Because Vonnegut invents an entire new religion and a fictional island on which to practice it.  And his characterization of the whole thing is so complete, that it is utterly believable.  And that’s only half the book.

So, let’s try this: John, the narrator decides to write a personal biography of Felix Hoenikker, the Father of the atomic bomb. Okay, so we know we are on somewhat fictional ground, and yet it is sort of based in reality.  Fine.

John discovers that Hoenikker’s kids are still alive.  Like John, Hoenikker’s son, Newt, went to Cornell and pledged to the same fraternity (John learned of him in the fraternity newsletter).  However, Newt just got kicked out of school because he didn’t really care about it all that much.

It turns out that Newt is, well, a midget.  Newt has a brother, Frank, who is quite tall, and a sister, Angela.  (There is some question of parental origin of the kids, but that is not explored very much).  Angela basically raised her brothers (and her father) when their mom died while giving birth to Newt.  For you see, Felix was about as absentee a dad as there could be.  Not because he wasn’t physically there, but because he wasn’t psychologically there, or really anywhere except in his own head.  (There’s a great example given that Felix once left a tip for his wife after a meal, he was so detached).  But Felix was a gifted genius, and his wife was devoted to him.  He just had no knack for interpersonal relationships.

And all of this background…chapters and chapters of family history (for there are 127 chapters in the book, most about 2 pages long), don’t prepare you in any way for what is to come.

Felix Hoenikker, in addition to inventing the atom bomb also invented something called ice-nine.  A pentagon general explains to John what ice-nine would do if it existed, but since it doesn’t exist, he doesn’t need to worry about it.   He didn’t know that Hoenikker had, just before he died, made enough ice-nine to destroy the world (in fact, it would only take a drop).  And you can bet that that will come into play at some point.

But what about that religion?  Well, the religion of Cat’s Cradle is Bokononism.  It is unique to the island of San Lorenzo, where the bulk of the end of the book is set.  Bokononism was created by a man named, what else, Bokonon.  The San Lorenzian language is a hybrid of  accented-beyond-recognition English.  And so Bokononism uses language that is unusual at best.  Words that are used frequently in the book include:

• karass – a group of people who, often unknowingly, are working together to do God’s will.
• duprass – a karass that consists of only two people., almost always married.  The two members of a duprass always die within a week of each other.
• granfalloon – a false karass; i.e., a group of people who imagine they have a connection that does not really exist. An example is “Hoosiers”; Hoosiers are people from Indiana, and Hoosiers have no true spiritual destiny in common, so really share little more than a name.  Also, really any group like Americans, Communists, Democrats.
• wampeter – the central theme or purpose of a karass
• foma – harmless untruths; lies that bring one comfort
• boko-maru – the supreme act of worship of the Bokononists, which is an intimate act consisting of prolonged physical contact between the naked soles of the feet of two persons.

So, as you read along you keep getting these weird words thrown at you, but pretty soon you start to get the words straight and really see how useful and truthful they are in the real world. (And you can totally see that people who loved this book undoubtedly used these words with each other–mostly in college, I’m sure.  Indeed, if the book were written now there would be T-shirts with these slogans on them).

But that’s neither here nor there, because even though this religion forms the backbone of John’s entire being (he converts when he arrives in San Lorenzo and this book, Cat’s Cradle, is written during the events of the book (What??), Bokononism does not directly impact the plot of the story.

Well, except in one way: When San Lorenzo was colonized (or should I say one of the times that San Lorenzo was colonized) Earl McCabe and Bokonon (real name Lionel Boyd Johnson) devised a clever plan: Invent a religion and then ban it.  Soon the entire population of the island became Bokononists and McCabe (for he became the dictator) threatened to kill anyone who believed or was caught practicing it.  (This was a great way to distract the people from any real problems that the island was facing).

The current dictator, “Papa” Mozano takes the ban on Bokononism a little more seriously in that he actually does kill the occasional person (and  engages a hunt for Bokonon), but aside from that very little has changed on the island.

The series of convergences that lead John, the Hoenikkers, and a few random Americans (including Mom, the one who creates the granfalloon about Hoosiers (see I told you we’d be using those words)), to San Lorenzo make up the main part of the story, so I’m not even willing to summarize.  But once they all end up on San Lorenzo, the action REALLY starts.

Suffice it to say that this story takes a twisted look at nationalism, religion, love and death.  One wouldn’t call the book funny, although there are very funny moments, but it is wry in its evisceration of conventional morality.  It also reveals itself to be far deeper than any of these nonsensical words would ever lead you to suspect.

Vonnegut really hits his stride with this book.  I’m not sure that this is even my favorite of his books that I have read thus far, but the confidence with which he throws out these ideas, and the utter conviction he has about what he has created–virtually ex nihilo–is amazing.  You never suspect for a second that Vonnegut is making this stuff up.  He may have been inventing Bokononism his whole life.

There’s also an interesting foreshadowing to Slaughterhouse Five in that a bird on San Lorenzo says “Pootee-phweet” a forerunner to Slaughterhouse’s “Poo-tee-weet.”

In Palm Sunday, Vonnegut rated Cat’s Cradle an A+ (you can see the list here), and it begins a series of very solid books (I’m pretty excited to get to these).  The title, Cat’s Cradle, incidentally comes into play later in the book and I adore its usage.  Simply brilliant.

SOUNDTRACK: ——-

The CD player in my car died.

Evidently the CD Error screen in the Prius’ 6 disc changer is not completely uncommon.  And I am devastated.  (And looking at a pretty penny to replace it).  In the past, I have installed stereos in at least three different cars.  But man, not only don’t I want to interfere with the sleek Prius console, I can’t even find the screws!

I also have 2 CDs in the player, and they won’t play or eject!  The one disc is no biggie, Sabotage by Black Sabbath, easily replaceable and for cheap too.  The other one, however, is The Tragically Hip’s Live from the Vault Vol. 4 which came free with their new album, We Are the Same.  I don’t think it’s available anywhere (not even on their website yet).  When I go in for my 60,000 mile tune up next month, I’m going to hope they can rescue it.

Until then, I must switch to, gasp, the radio.  Which isn’t that terrible.  However, it means I have no place for scrutinizing music (it’s hard to get absorbed in a CD when you have two kids), and the car was my only place for music as more than background.  Alas.

[READ: May 6, 2009] The Autobiography of J.G.B.

My only exposure to J.G. Ballard prior to reading this has been in the Divine Comedy song “The Booklovers” in which Neil Hannon states “J.G. Bal-ARD”–”instrument binnacle” (which is from his novel Crash).  I did see the movie of Crash, but that’s neither here nor there.

This story is very short, barely one page long, and it shows the main character, B, wandering around Shepperton as he realizes that no other living creatures are around.  Anywhere.  And so, B slowly adjusts to his new life.

As far as limited plots and really short stories go, this story was really intriguing.  It ends with the implication that a whole novel could spring forth from this story (it sets up what he will do next without actually saying anything) and yet I rather hope he doesn’t turn this into anything longer.  This was a nice, tidy story and the ending suited it perfectly.

I’m not sure if this will inspire me to read other works by him.

It’s available here.