Episode 15 is a huge one, so I finished up that and 16 this week.
One thing I noted about Episode 15 is that in this section:
THE VOICE OF ALL THE DAMNED Htengier Tnetopinmo Dog Drol eht rot, Aiulella!
(From on high the voice of Adonai calls.)
ADONAI Dooooooooooog!
THE VOICE OF ALL THE BLESSED Alleluia, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth!
(From on high the voice of Adonai calls.)
ADONAI Goooooooooood!
the texts that are printed backwards are played as the forward recording flipped in reverse. It was a cool effect.
I really didn’t enjoy Episode 16 while I was reading it. I felt it was overly long and perhaps too focused on the mis-named sailor. Plus, I was really looking forward to Episode 17 (which is my favorite). But this time, with someone else reading the hard words, I was able to appreciate quite a lot more about this Episode.
Lar’s comments about Skin-the Goat also helped to give some background to this odd character. And this leads me to a question that I sort of thought about while reading, but which comes up a lot more for me in this listen: Joyce’s opinion of Ireland and of Irish independence. The Citizen in the earlier episode was all about the Irish language and Gaelic sports. And now in this Episode there is a lot of talk about Parnell returning. Was this all included because it is what old men in Dublin talked in Dublin in 1904, or was it something that Joyce had a vested interest in (even while he was living in Paris where he wrote the book). [I could investigate this, but that seems like an awful lot of work.] (more…)
SOUNDTRACK: LUTHER WRIGHT AND THE WRONGS-instrumentality (2006).
I loved Luther’s Rebuild the Wall, and I kind of thought of him as country, but not really country. A sort of punky country (his song “Broken Fucking Heart” lead me in that direction, too).
But this album is all instrumentals (hence the title) and it’s very traditional bluegrass/banjo-fueled tracks. Eleven tracks in all (totaling about 22 minutes). There’s even a cover of “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” Listening to this I realized that I like banjo music (not as my favorite type mind you, but certainly more than a little). Steve Martin (an excellent banjoist himself) once said:
“You just can’t sing a depressing song when you’re playing the banjo. You can’t go– [grins, plays and sings] “Oh, murder and death and grief and sorrow!”
And there’s something to be said for that. With this fun collection of mostly 2 minutes songs, you’ll smile for twenty minutes or so. (And the playing is top notch, too).
[READ: September 11, 2010] Handle Time
When I wrote about One Night @ the Call Center, several readers said I must read Handle Time, that it was the consummate Call Center novel and that it was much better than One Night. So I tried to find it. No libraries in New Jersey carried it. And although I could get it at Amazon, there was precious little other information about it. Well, I finally decided to add it to our library collection (so I didn’t have to pay for it) and to read it for myself.
My first surprise came when the first line of the text has the word embarrassed written in a super large font. The font is so large in fact that it put a pretty sizable space between the lines of text (that’s called leading). My second surprise came when I saw that littered throughout the text were a whole bunch of large words and crazy fonts and a bunch of clip art pictures that showed what was happening. (I was especially surprised when one of them turned out to be Mr Burns from The Simpsons!).
So it turns out that there are different fonts throughout the book, some of them large and crazy, others fancy and scripty. But the long and short of it is that this book is really only about 50 pages long (I mean I read the entire 188 pages in about 2 hours).
Okay, but what about the content. Well the plot itself is fairly brief. Chase gets a job at a call center. She sits through orientation, begins working, gets demoralized and has a panic attack about her job. That’s pretty much it. But really what you read the book for is for the side bits, the comments, the snark, the sympathizing with call center workers.
Except that I’ve never worked in a call center and yet I have experienced many of the things in the novel. So, this book, much loved by call center workers, could be about pretty much any shit job (except for the part about keeping your numbers up (and the part about not actually helping people because it skews your average handle time)). But bad cafeterias, microwaves, bizarre HR nonsense, stupid powerpoints, they’re part of any corporate job. And she does a good job in skewering them, they’re just not specific to call centers. (more…)
This is the final bonus track on Dromedary‘s recently reissued Mommyheads album Flying Suit.
This is probably the most conventional Mommyheads song that I know of. It reminds me a lot of the music from Late Night with David Letterman. It swings, it’s jaunty, it’s kind of funny and it has some almost zany guitar work on it.
It is probably the ideal “bonus track” for a band that usually writes quirky, off -kilter songs as it doesn’t sound like it should be on the album, but it is still in the spirit of the rest of the songs. The jazziness if reminiscent of their other work, but there’s something oddly rocking about this track. It’s a real treat.
I’m not a serious birdwatcher, but ever since I saw my first hairy woodpecker at my apartment in Boston, I’ve been a huge fan of having birds around. The hairy woodpecker is tiny (and very cute). Since we moved to a wooded area of New Jersey, I’ve been lucky enough to see a red-bellied woodpecker and, I believe, the even more elusive pileated woodpecker. We’ve even had flickers in our yard.
So this article sees Wells Tower heading down to Arkansas to talk to the man who claims to have seen the first Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, Gene Sparling. The man who caused all the fuss to begin with back in 2005.
And this is a great piece of non-fiction. Tower brings his excellent storytelling skills and describes a trip into the Arkansas woods looking for this possibly extinct bird. (more…)
Dromedary has recently reissued The Mommyheads’ Flying Suit CD. And there are three bonus tracks available on it now.
I mentioned Flying Suit a little while ago. What I really liked about that disc was that it was all over the place and yet remained comfortably within its genre of jangle pop-rock.
This first of three new tracks is just under 2 minutes long. It has a watery guitar and a propulsive bass, and yet it is still a sort of delicate song. The vocals, as with the rest of the disc, are soft, with nice harmonies. It’s hard to get overly excited about the song (as it’s not like a sonic blast of 2 minutes), but it’s nice to have even more Mommyheads.
Bonus track number 2 tomorrow. Check the songs out (and buy them) here.
[READ: September 9, 2010] “Cannery Woe”
Since I recently read the Wells Tower story in the New Yorker, I remembered that I was going to read his other travel stories from Outside. I started with this one because it is shortest (1 page).
Tower has a wonderful grasp of storytelling. So even a fairly simple story like this (where really nothing terrible happens) is made quite exciting. And the twist, such as it was, is totally unexpected. (more…)
I discovered this video (again, considerably later than the controversy for it) because my friend Rich said he didn’t know there was a genre called “crabcore.” A search for crabcore suggests that it is a goof “genre” named specifically for this band and the goofy way they dance around.
This song starts with very heavy riffing and some growls and screaming and then jumps quickly into an auto-tuned very catchy chorus (they sound like a more polished and poppy version of Alexisonfire).
Then comes the verses which are screamed very loudly and heavily followed by a bridge (?) that is even more cookie monster-vocals like (with a strange cartoon effect thrown at the end of each line of the chorus). It’s almost like commercial death metal, and I kind of liked it. They’re pushing boundaries
Then there’s more chugga chugga heavy riffing and the song is reaching the end and then WHAT? the songs shifts gears into a keyboard fueled discoey dance song. First it’s hi energy and then it slows into a mellow auto-tuned bit that proceeds to the end.
What the hell? I’m all for a band pushing the boundaries of genres, but holy cow. And just to add one more gimmick, they’re a Christian band as well (although you’d never know from the lyrics, whatever the hell he’s singing about). This is no “Jesus is My Friend,” let me tell you.
So yea, I don’t really know what to make of it. The video makes me laugh with their all black outfits and synchronized everything–and that may be why they have replaced it with a new video which is much more boring. I assume they’re just anther trendy band that will disappear soon enough (there’s a lot of snarky fun at their expense at this definition of “crabcore“).
I don’t have a clue what the title is supposed to mean, nor half of their other titles on the album: “Fumbles O’Brian” “Renob, Nevada.” I listened to some samples of the other songs and they seem far more dancey/discoey than death metal, so I’m not really sure what’s up with the rest of the record.
But whatever. In the meantime, enjoy the silly video
[READ: July–September 10, 2010] K Blows Top
I heard about this book through a great interview on NPR in June of 2009. It sounded like a really funny book and I was seriously considering reading it. Of course, then I forgot about it.
About 8 months later, the library received a huge donation of books, and this was right on top, just begging me to read it. So, I saved it for myself and decided it was about time to crack it open. Several months after that I finally opened it and was totally hooked.
I didn’t know much about Khrushchev before reading this. I knew vaguely about “the shoe” incident, but that was it. In fact, the whole beginning of the cold war era was a bit of a mystery to me. Since I lived through Reagan, I never felt compelled to find out what had caused the 80s.
But I’m super glad that I read this. The book follows Khrushchev’s visits to the United States when he was premiere of the Soviet Union. Carlson combed through tons of newspaper reports about his visit here (ostensibly to visit with Eisenhower, but more just to enjoy himself in the American heartland), and pulls together a fascinating story from a number of sources.
But more than just an interesting look at history, this book is very funny. (more…)
After the two minute bonus track of “Over” comes the lengthy (very lengthy for The Mommyheads) “Box”.
I’m not sure what the song is about, but it’s got some great licks within it. It opens with a twisted guitar opening, one that never sems to settle. In fact, the entire first verse seems like the song doesn’t quite know where it’s going (which is deliberate, of course).
Because by the end of the second verse we get a very lengthy instrumental break that is ferocious in its coolness. It begins softly and then morphs into a psychedelic workout: harmonized guitar notes, funky drumming, and yet all within a mellow styling. It’s very clever.
Its a strange song and it may be my favorite Mommyheads song of all. It’s an excellent bonus track. Check the songs out (and buy them) here.
[READ: September 9, 2008] “New Orleans, LA”
This is probably the most straightforward “reporting” piece that I’ve read by Tower. As such, it doesn’t have a lot of flair to it.
It’s an interesting look at the rebuilding of New Orleans, into what appears to be a greener, stronger and better city than ever before. It almost seems like you need a terrible catastrophe and the goodwill of citizens to make a place even better than it was before.
He mentions a few individuals who were (and maybe still are) doing extra work to rebuild the city, and they are quite inspirational.
Because it was so brief, I’m pairing it with another brief but much more entertaining article: “Extract a Tick from Your Junk” from the “How to Do Everything (Well Almost)” piece from the July 2007 issue. (more…)
Stuyvesant (one of the hardest band names to spell) is an amalgam of the defunct New Jersey bands Footstone and Friends, Romans, Countrymen. And so, as you might expect if you know these other bands, they play noisy rock with a healthy dose of pop.
The opener, “Bi-Polar Bears” is a great example of their punky pop (complete with an unexpected horn section). The second track, “Tape Hiss” sounds like Footstone (Ralphie’s voice is very distinct here) although the “do-do-do” harmonies are something new to the sound.
There’s more surprise from a major break in “Ode to Bish” which features a “waka jawacka” guitar and a horn solo. “Liars Poker” also features some cool bass vocal harmonies (something of a rare treat in rock music).
Perhaps the biggest surprise is the slow opening of “Broken Red Wing.” I was pleasantly surprised that after the slow opening, it did not jump quickly into a song that sounded like the rest on the disc. Guitars kick in but they are not the same crunchy style. The track shows an unexpected diversity on the disc.
While I have enjoyed both the Footstone and FRC releases, I think this conflation of the two makes for the best overall package. It’s a great EP, and I’m looking forward to the full length. This EP is available for free. That’s right, for free. So even if you hate it, you can still download it for free. In any format, and then you can burn it to a CD, in the format that music is meant to be enjoyed.
[READ: September 8, 2010] “The Landlord”
Wells Tower is another 20 Under 40. I’ve enjoyed the few short stories(although I haven’t read his collection yet) and the non-fiction he’s written for Outside magazine.
This story feels like an excerpt from a longer piece because there are a lot of different characters who seem like there’s more to them.
The main character is the landlord, Mr Pruitt. He owns a lot of properties, but in the current market he has had to sell a number of them. And, of course, his tenants are paying him less and less frequently. As the story opens we meet one of those tenants, Armando Colón, who is three months overdue. Armando has a solution to his problem which he presents to Mr Pruitt. When Armando leaves, Mr Pruitt’s worker, Todd Toole mocks him for letting people fuck him over. (more…)
This week I almost finished Episode 15. I’ve just finished where Bella turns into Bello and things get really weird. And I have to say that this Episode, for all of its craziness, is masterfully handled by Donal Donnelly. I’ve already raved about his vocal stylings in the earlier chapters, dealing with so many different men. But in this chapter he proves to be very dextrous at male and female voices, with a very delicate voice for some and an incredibly masculine woman’s voice for Bello (very well done indeed). He has also proven himself to be a treat with sound effects (of which there are many here). I won’t say for certain that it makes this insane Episode a lot clearer, but it certainly makes it easier to follow.
Back to Episode 13. The Gertie section is written in a style that is supposed to be romantic, very quick and flowy. And Donal really nails it. After the business of Episode 12, the lightness of 13 is wonderful, and it really brings to life the scene, especially when the rockets go off.
One thing I picked up this time is that Bloom assumes that he knows exactly when Blazes and Molly consummated their affair. Even re-reading it now, it wasn’t quite as clear as the way he read it aloud:
Funny my watch stopped at half past four. Dust. Shark liver oil they use to clean could do it myself. Save. Was that just when he, she?
O, he did. Into her. She did. Done.
Ah!
So, yes I suppose it’s obvious, but sometimes reading along you just don’t pick things up. And it took the way he read it for me to realize just what those short sentences meant. (more…)
I’m Here is the new short film that Spike Jonze directed. (You can read more about the story behind the film at my post about the accompanying book There Are Many Of Us.) And you can see the whole film and much more at the official site.
The film is 30 minutes long and it is surprisingly touching. Surprisingly especially because the main characters are robots. The robots are wonderfully designed (they’re not animated, they are people with plastic coverings and fantastic heads–the main male robot’s head is made from an old Macintosh computer). I assume there is CGI for the mouths (they look too fluid to be anything else), but the rest of the movie is very old school.
As the film opens, we see Sheldon, who works in a library (as a shelver) who seems content and who seems to be making the best of things. The other robots that we see live in what seems like a kind of narcotic state (plugging themselves in to recharge at night). One morning, while he’s waiting for the bus (because robots can’t drive), he sees a robot driving a car. She is a beautiful robot, and we see them share a moment across the busy street. And since this is short film, you know they are destined to be together.
The robots share tender moments (their substitute for kissing is very sweet) as well as rocking moments (they go to a Lost Trees concert together). We get to see a bit of their inner lives as well. And the two form an intense bond. (more…)
Episode 15 is a huge one, so I finished up that and 16 this week.
SOUNDTRACK: MOMMYHEADS-“Over” (2010).
I Just Read About That... 