I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: PEARL JAM-Riot Act (2002).

This album seems to get overshadowed by the anti-George Bush track “Bu$hleaguer.” Evidently many people were turned off by this track, and that may have had an impact on sales. Of course, I’m sure many other people were introduced to the band by this song, too. Regardless, the rest of the album shouldn’t be judged by this track, as it is rather unusual.

This disc is the first one to feature a dedicated keyboardist, “Boom” Gaspar.  He’s present on all of the live discs from this concert tour, and it is quite disconcerting the first time you hear the audience yell “Boooooooooooom” when he comes out.  But he plays a mean organ solo.

“Can’t Keep” opens the disc sounding unlike other PJ tracks.  It has a vibe like Led Zeppelin III–almost a world-acoustic feel.  “Save You” rocks out with the classic chorus, “And fuck me if I say something you don’t wanna hear.  And fuck me if you only hear what you wanna hear.  Fuck me if I care.”  A great fast song with a cool bassline.  “Love Boat Captain” feature Boom Gaspar’s first contribution to a song: lots of organ.  It’s a rather touching song, a gentle piece, except for a center part which rocks out. “Cropduster” features a delicate chorus after a skittery verse.  If you are familiar with Matt Cameron’s contributions to the band, you’ll not be surprised by the unusual sound of this song.

“I Am Mine” starts a section of three great songs. This one is acousticy and uplifting.  “Thumbing My Way” is a pretty PJ ballad.  Then “You Are” has a really funky wah wahed sound on almost the whole song.  Three great tracks in a row.

Not that “Get Right” is bad.  It just doesn’t quite fit the mood of the previous three.  Rather, this is a punk blast that feels more than a little off-kilter (another Cameron track, of course).   “Help Help” begins the really weird section of the disc with this peculiar song (catchy chorus though).  It’s followed by “Bu$hleaguer” a spoken word rant, with an abstract chorus.  The chanting aspect is interesting, th0ugh.  “Arc” is a short chant, no doubt reflecting Eddie’s duet with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

“1/2 Full” returns to the “proper” songs with this sloppy jam.  The verses are quiet but the choruses rock.  “All or None” is another mellow disc ender, this one has some good subtle drumming that really propels this jazzy song.

At this point in Pearl Jam’s career, we get yet another solid effort.  You more or less know what to expect on their releases although there’s always a surprise.

[READ: May 7, 2009] McSweeney’s #3

This is the third volume of McSweeney’s print journal.  This one, like the first two, is a white, softcover edition.  If you click on the cover above it will take you to the flickr page with a larger picture.

[UPDATE: September 25, 2009]

It has just come to my attention that David Foster Wallace DOES have a  piece in this magazine.  (See my comment on the Notes from the authors).  His piece runs on the spine of the book and is called:
“Another Example of the Porousness of Various Borders (VI): Projected but not Improbable Transcript of Author’s Parents’ Marriage End, 1971” (which is also available in his book Brief Interviews with Hideous Men under the title “Yet Another Example of the Porousness of Certain Borders (VI)”).

The piece itself is almost shorter than the whole title and is basically a funny argument about which parent would get the double-wide trailer and which parent would get him.  Pretty funny stuff, and even funnier for being on the spine.

Okay, back to the issue.

[end UPDATE]

The opening colophon on this one explains the price increase (from $8 to $10).  It’s because this is a longer issue, it has color plates (foldouts!) and because of a sad but amusing anecdote of a lost bag with $2,000 cash.
There’s also notes about some stories (the Hoff & Steinhardt pieces are true) and an apology of sorts for running a story about the Unabomber.

And an actual (presumably) envelope sent from the titular Timothy McSweeney, as a way of verifying the authenticity of the title of the journal.

The final page of the colophon shows a sample of how long it will take for them to respond to submissions (which should not be funny fake news).  And it ends with a half a dozen or so random questions, which they do answer: ARE THE RIVERS THAT FLOW FROM HOT SPRINGS HOT? They are often very warm.  DO THEY GIVE OFF STEAM? Yes, and they smell vaguely of sulfur. MARTIN VAN BUREN: He had a certain charm.  etc.

LETTERS PAGE:

JONATHAN LETHEM
Ride with Jonatahn Lethem and the Mad Brooklynite as he narrates Manhattan’s superiority complex when it comes to the other boros.  Funny stuff.

COLLEEN WERTHMANN
Three letters that are not exactly letters, but are more or less basic information about mummies.

JASON ADAMS
Is called the Crying Game.

DAVID SHIELDS
A series of questions about writing, hoping that the editors will answer.  They seem like themes or essays from an AP English class.

ARTHUR BRADFORD
A short story about drinking moonshine, and the bad effects it can have.

JASON DE JOUX
An amusing tale about describing what’s on TV to a person in another room trying to improve the reception of his own TV.

PAUL MALISZEWSKI
Solves the math riddle in Brent Hoff’s story from issue #2

CHRISTOPHER P. RILEY-ZALENIEV
A letter written to Partisan Review which ends up at McSweeney’s.  The premise is that the author is writing a dissertation on rejected poetry submissions and what they say about out culture (which actually sounds like a good idea).  Despite being told that he sent to the wrong magazine,. C.P. R-Z replies with a list of questions that one might ask for such a dissertation.  No answers are provided, sadly.

DENISE O’MARA
An amusing typographical joke contained within.

RODNEY ROTHMAN
Along with writers from The Late Show with David Letterman, Rodney Rothman created a fake boy band called Fresh Step, which they debuted on Letterman and then got onto TRL.  (You can still find some information about them online, although their “official site” is no longer active.  The next 8 pages are examples of some of the emails the band received on their website…they are hilarious.  The last 2 pages of notes are actually a message from the Hotmail admin telling them that their mailbox is full and which emails will be deleted next.  Detailed! Some of this is available here.

CAMDEN JOY
An in depth letter about boxing, referencing Bobby Chacon and Warren Zevon.

MORGAN PHILLIPS-“Eulogy for Carlos”
A brief, mysterious letter about a recently departed friend named Carlos.

SARAH VOWELL
One of Vowell’s fascinating looks at a historical aspect of Paris.  A bullet hole has removed the St. from a street sign…was is the underlying message of the French Revolution?

DEAN F. CULLY
The very first subscriber from Bethel, Alaska?

MAIN PIECES:

CHRISTINE NUNEZ-“Untitled”
A list of 19 titles for sale.

JOHN WARNER-“The Circus Elephants Look Sad Because They Are”
A surreal story in three parts: the first involves an interview for a job in which the interviewer is more interested in his own prowess at Gung (not Kung) Fu; on his way home, the interviewee watches as the wind picks up a woman and floats her into a cloud; when he returns home he finds that his wife is upset because their bo0oks are committing suicide by flinging themselves off the shelves.  An enjoyable flight of fancy.

PAUL COLLINS-“Banvard’s Folly”
This is a nonfiction piece as only Paul Collins can do.  He tracks down information about Jon Banvard, the first millionaire artist who gained fame through extravagant panoramic pictures, one of which, an “actual size” painting of the Mississippi River was three miles long, and accompanied a live show in which the panorama was unveiled while he gave the audience a tour of the Mississippi.  The titular folly concerns the extravagant house he built with the money, and also concerns his attempts to fight PT Barnum in the museum/spectacle realm.  Fascinating history of an unfamiliar man.

CHRIS SORRENTINO-“The Organ Grinder”
An imagined history of what the inventor if the ice cream cone must have thought.  An enjoyable fantasy.

AMY KROUSE ROSENTHAL/CYNTHIA KAPLAN-“Legend”
A map with rather a amusing legend.

J. ROBERT LENNON-“Anecdotes: Three of Them”
I enjoyed this piece with three amusing “proto-flash-fiction” tales:
“Copycat” concerns copycat suicides and what happens if the original person was not what they thought.  “The Mad Folder” is a cautionary story about discovering that someone has been folding all of the laundry in the apartment building’s laundry room…and what happens when you finally meet the person.  “Film Star’s Dog” is a short piece about a friend who may or may not have met a film star while at the dog park.
Each piece is amusing and memorable, especially given their brevity.

LAWRENCE WESCHLER-“Convergences I: Found Diptych”
Weschler explains the premise behind his convergences (that would later appear in Everything That Rises).  The premise is that sometimes pictures resonate with each other.  Sometimes they are done intentionally, but often they are accidental.  Weschler finds these converges and gives little explanations about them and where they came from.  This first one (included in a full color fold out) compares three pictures of women advertising upcoming art exhibits.  They all arrived in his mail box at the same time and are surprisingly similar.

LUCY THOMAS-“This Story Is Small Because I am Not Sure It’s Good”
Indeed, a small story about luminescent caves.  It is okay.

GARY GREENBERG-“In the Kingdom of the Unabomber”
This is a lengthy non-fiction piece about Greenberg’s attamepts to communicate and eventually get a book published with he Unabomber (just after his arrest but before his conviction), Ted Kaczynski.  Greenberg is a therapist who believed that the Unabomber was unfairly ruled insane (a long section explains his dismay with psychiatrists and their jump to conclusions).  We learn of the correspondence that Greenberg started and about the Unabomber’s careful, meticulous and lengthy replies.  By the end of the piece you feel a sort of intimate fascination with Kaczynski–you don’t really like him–but you sort of understand what he was so mad about.  Greenberg never goes so far as to agree with what he did, but he definitely feels a degree of affinity for his ideas.  The end half of the article is about Greenberg’s attempts to work with Kaczynski, and to see how Kaczynski himself is manipulating everyone to try and get what he wants out of the deal.  Totally fascinating.

RICK MOODY-“Confessional Poem”
A personal poem. Moody confesses to all of the things that he uses on a daily basis: Denotape, Raisin Bran, Converse All Stars. But when he describes his family, it is surprisingly touching

LAWRENCE WESCHLER-“Convergences II: Pillsbury Doughboy Messiahs”
A funny/scary/entertaining look at the similarities between Newt Gingrich and Slobodon Milsovic.  This piece is also inEverything That Rises, and the photos are included here too.

KEN FOSTER (WITH ANA MARIE COX)-“Red Dresses”
A story about a party at a famous author’s house in which all of the guests–men and women–are required to wear a red dress.  The beginning of the story is dry and funny, with uncomfortable moments.  There is a lot packed into the story, with a surprise built in.
But the Ana Marie Cox part is a fascinating twist.  Ana Marie Cox “comments” on the story in the margin.  AMC does not know Foster, so it’s not a friendly chat, and she is quite critical of parts of the story.  And THEN, Foster gets to reply to AMC.  His comments are snarky and funny too.  But be sure to read the whole story first, as AMC’s comments give away the ending.

ZEV BOROW-“John Noble Wilford is Curt”
The next in the series of Zev Borow’s letters to famous media folks (Wilford works as The New York Times science correspondent).  Borow complains that he is very curt, and not–as his middle name states–Noble.  It is never explained in any of these letter how Borow’s beef started with any of these people.

SAUL STEINBERG-“Country Noises”
A visual aid of the sounds you’d hear in the country.  An interesting use of dingbats.

DAVID STEINHARDT-“Tiny, Tiny Vibrating Strings and an eleven dimensional world”
A non fiction piece.  This is an interview between David Steinhardt and Brian Greene, Greene is an academic who works with string theory.  Steinhardt is writing a novel in which string theory figures largely.  It is also a coincidence that the two men grew up together in the same building (when they were 4 or 5), lost contact, and then Steinhardt accidentally stumbled upon him while doing research.  It’s a heady interview, but it is dumbed down enough for the layperson to understand the gist.

E. WEINBERGER-“Plausibles: Provisional Beginnings for Stories That Might Never Be Written, But Could. [exercises to encourage and supply the imagination]”
As the subtitle states, these are 121 stories topics; most are funny, many are absurd and some would make darn good stories.

JUDY BUDNITZ-“Flush”
An interesting story about two sisters who made a pact to visit their parents (alternately) once in a while so that they’d be in the habit of doing it when they actually “had” to.  On this particular visit, Lise (the narrator) visits her parents (who meet her at the airport when she asked them not to) for a weekend.  While there, her dad asks her to accompany her mom to get a mammogram.  Strange things are afoot at the center, including a possible fish in a toilet.  The long and short is that her mom skips out on the mammogram.  So what is a daughter to do?  And what is her sister to do if it happens when she visits?  I expected a twist but the twist that came was different.  I enjoyed this story for its many aspects.

BRENT HOFF-“Spider Silk is a Neat Material the World Wants.  Can We Make This in Goats?”
This is another non-fiction piece. It is an interview with Jeff Turner (CEO of Nexia Biotech), Dr. Randy Lewis (arachnologist), Dr Fritz Vollrath (arachnologist), and Joe Spagna (insect biology PhD student).  They discuss the properties of spider silk and how its strength and flexibility led Nexia Biotech to try and develop it in the milk of goats.  It is a fascinating look at this technology which they say should be ready by 2010 (this was in 1999). So let’s see what we can find on it: It sounds like they have been producing it, yet their website‘s photo links are all broken. The interview was funny, very weird and very informative.

MARK O’DONNELL-“A Small Reception: A Musical”
This is a short musical about a caterer and the wedding that he is catering.  The upcoming wedding features his ex girlfriend.  He plans revenge, all to a delightful soundtrack.

TOM TOMORROW-“A Meaningless Story Fragment, Cynically Designed to Appeal to the Editors of This Journal, Whose Weakness for Phrases Such as ‘Come on, Pops’ is Widely Known & Remarked Upon”
Indeed, a brief, amusing story featuring the phrase, “Come on Pops.”

JIM HANAS-“The Adventures of Bad Badger”
This is a funny, weird story told in two parts.  In the first part,Jones thinks long and hard about what tattoo to get, he finally decides on his new favorite comic strip character, Bad Badger.  He is dismayed when the cartoon is canceled and, that basically, no one has heard of it.  Part two has Jones meeting a woman who similarly tells a story that no one, not even Jones, can relate to.

A.G. PASQUELLA-“Good Ad for Any Telecommunications Company”
In fact, this would not be a good ad for anything, but it is a funny play about evil Monkeys in their fight against a Wizard.

TRACY OLSSEN-“Tin Chicken”
This story has a physical feature which I did not try out.  The center pages have dotted lines which you are supposed to cut along to give three rows of text that you can sort of mix and match.  I tried to read some of the sections as if they were interchangeable, but they really don’t work very well (one sectioned ended with a man talking and the following section starting with She said), so I’ll just talk about the story itself.
It is an odd little story about the narrator’s mother, Wawa.  Wawa is an “antique” collector who has slowly transformed their house into an antique showroom.  The narrator tries her best to mess with the visitors during the tours, but her mother has little patience for it.  The narrator’s dad is an alcoholic who brings nothing but shame to Wawa.  During one tour, a tour member claims that the antique tea set on display is, in fact, her own and offers to buy it back.  Wawa catches her husband and daughter packing up the set for this woman.  Just as the story is reaches this climax, the last few paragraphs just sort of fade the story out, with some lines about Easter.

LAWRENCE WESCHLER-“Convergences: Expressions of an Absolute”
[There’s an interesting note that I never saw before on the 4th page of this gatefold stating that they had to have this 4th page even though it was blank.  Huh].  This third piece shows the similarities between Jackson Pollock’ds paintings and scenes from outer space and Mark Rothko’s paintings and photos of the moon.  The comparisons are apt, especially given the preponderance of stellar and lunar images at the time (late 1960s).  Weschler is not trying to say that either of these artists was inspired by outer space for their work, just that there are uncanny similarities.

This last section is titled Three Christmas Stories

T.Z. PARSA-“Christmas in China (O-E-O-E-O!)”
This is a complex story intertwining several characters as they interact in Christmases past and present.  The main family is the Jaegers: Ann and her deceased husband Bert and their two sons.  The family has had two maids in recent years.  The first one, Julia, was having an affair with Bert; the current one, Carmen, a Chinese woman, is presently waiting for a ride home this Christmas Eve.  However, Carmen’s husband, Foo, is drunk and will not be coming to pick her up tonight.  The various story lines follow Foo and his dreams of showing off his prosperity to his relatives back in China;  Carmen as she tries to make her way home;  Ann, as she tries not to fart in front of anyone (in an unexpected and hilarious sequence; and Bert as he heads to Julia’s house on a Christmas past with presents for her son and an adulterous present for her.  This was a really great story.  Since the points of view changed throughout, you never became complacent with one person’s opinions.  Although there isn’t really any happiness in the story (until Ann’s sons come home) it was still really enjoyable.  Available in PDF here.

MAGNUS MILLS-“Hark the Herald”
This story concerns a man at a seaside resort during Christmas season. He escapes to this desolate area for some time to himself.  He gets more than he expected though, when all of the other guests seem to be around, but are always out of sight. It’s not a creepy or scary story, just a feeling of fish out of water.  Weirdly enjoyable.

STEVEN AMICK-“Santa & Son”
A funny, dark story about what it would be like to be Santa’s son.  Gunta, who has changed his named to Jeff, resents his father for never having been there on Christmas for him.  He longs to live in the real world, with real humans, not in the elf world of the North pole.  Santa, always watching everything he does, but also really clueless, expects Jeff to join him at the North Pole and marry an elf.  Jeff has other plans, and is willing to fight for them.

–Brief intermission

EDWIN ROZIC AND A. HEMON-“The New, Abridged Dictionary of Accepted Terms”
This type of thing is what I think McSweeney‘s (and Might Magazine) were all about when they started: quirky, funny, “ironic” pieces that made you think and laugh a little.  This one is a selected dictionary of terms that we should all agree on.  They are all pretty funny and feature things like “Inner City, The–Cultureless place where whites are immediately killed” & “Koran--a book that shows how to blow things up.”  [This is modetrately less inflammatory as it was written in 1999, not 2001.]

MISC.

TODD PRUZAN-“Cards”
A humorous look at celebrity cards (long before the rise of Texas Hold ‘Em) with a series of games of Hearts, Crazy Eights and Old Maid.  Tempers flair, weapons are drawn.  It’s a tough life.

ERIC McHENRY-“FALL COURSE LISTINGS”
All courses are closed.   A humorous look at university course listings including Introduction to Anthropology and The Cultural Politics of Poiticics.

NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS.
Follows the standard alphabetical format.  But every listing includes an observation that his/her work in this issue of McSweeney’s is the best thing that he/she has done (always very funny).  It also contains the apocryphal: “DAVID FOSTER WALLACE lives in Illinois.  This is his first published work.”

E. WEINBERGER-“Re.-Plausibles: Updates on Those We Met Earlier”
This is a brief follow-up on some of the stories that Weinberger suggested earlier.  He revisits many of the characters that he created and shows what happened to them.

AVAILABILITY
A list of stores that sell McSweeney’s. I wonder how many are still in business.  (I’m not going to investigate that).

As with the last issue, this issue contains an excerpt from McSweeney’s WEB-SIZED ANOMALY, a 4 pt type sized excerpt from the website.

JEFF JOHNSON-“Once Their Tools Were Stolen, Other Things Happened”
A report of vehicular accidents on mopeds and in Ford Taureses.

BILL WASIK-“The Party Problem”
A mathematical problem in the guise of guests arriving at a party.  A word problem taken to illogical and funny extremes.

CAROL MAGARY-“I Love ‘Our Mister Collins'”
A review of the fake film Our Mister Collins, inserting the Top 50 actors on the American Film Institute’s list into inappropriate roles. Available here.

ZEV BOROW-“A Return to Tradition”
A series of requests that certain parties be allowed to resume traditional behaviors in light of a successful request by other parties.  For example, the ability to pull a person’s beating heart out of his chest because one’s ancestors were Mayan.  Humorous nonsense.  Available here.

PAUL  MALISZEWSKI-“At Long Last, David Gergen Week: Four Dreams of Gergen”
Four appropriately bizarre dreams that involve David Gergen, professor of public service at Harvard.

TIM CARVELL-“History’s Great Persons Reconsidered”
What if David Caruso left NYPD at the wish of a dying child, not to try and further his career in the movies?  Would your opinion of him change?

LUCY THOMAS-“At Noon the Paper is Too Bright to Look At (Three Short Things)”
3 Flash Fiction pieces (before the term was used, I believe) by Davis.  None is particularly remarkable.

DAVID MAMET ADAPTED FOR THE INTERNET BY PAUL MALISZEWSKI-“A Review Of ‘The Winslow Boy,’ The 1999 Movie By David Mamet About A Young Boy At The Center Of A Quiet Drama Of Manners, Politeness, And Submerged Emotions Set In Early 20th Century England, In Which The Boy Is Accused Of Theft And Forgery And Eventually Drummed Out Of Military School, As Evaluated By Williamson And Levene, Two Characters In “Glengarry Glen Ross,” The 1983 Play By David Mamet, Both Desperate Salesmen At The Time, The Former In His Early Forties And The Latter In His Fifties, Who Recently Have Turned In Their Late Fifties Or Sixties, Respectively, To Popular Film Criticism To, I Don’t Know, Make Ends Meet Or Something”
Title says it all, and more, really. Available here

KOMAR  & MELAMID-“ADVERTISEMENT”
An ad for the fascinating-sounding Light-Shadow Therapy.  It promises to do wonders for what ails you.  Sadly the website www.lightshadowtherapy.com is no longer active.

CHIP CHAMBERS QUARTERBACK SERIES
Continuing in the tradition of Meg McGillicuddy and Willi Nilli (who both appear in one of the volumes), this is a series of books, available upon payment, about Chip Chambers, varsity quarterback, ace detective and android!

A NOTE ABOUT THE TYPE:
An extended and fictional look at Garamond–the type and its creator. It ultimately concludes with Garamond feeding himself to his son to prove his love.  A rather amusing flight of fancy.

Wow, that was exhausting!

This was a strong collection.  It conatined a varied collection of serious non-fiction, serious fiction and utter nonsense.  The next volume came packaged in a box with a series of stapled chapbooks.  I’m looking forward to that new format.