I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: THE SKINNY BOYS-“Jockbox” (1986).

I didn’t realize that the theme song from Workaholics was from a real song.  I loved the “I’m fresh” bit in the show, but I thought it sounded like it might actually be from something.  Sure enough, the internet led me to this.  The Skinny Boys (evidently a response to The Fat Boys) from the hip hop mecca of Bridgeport, CT put out this beatbox song (with that cool sci-fi keybaord) as a shocase for their member: The Human Jock Box.

This is a pretty bizarre track.  And I’m not even sure what they’re talking about.  But I love the hiccups around the three minute mark.  Note also how by the end of the song, the keyboard plays the riff from Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit” and then a little later “America the Beautiful” (with accompanying beatbox).  Wha??

The Workaholics bit is from 1:13 to 1:23.  You gotta be fresh!

[READ: July 25, 2011] “Matinée”

I’m not going to say how I just don’t get Coover.  Every time I read one of his stories I think the same thing: it’s clever but, well, so wha?  I know that Coover is an experimental fiction writer, but I just feel that there’s no emotional resonance to his stories.  Perhaps I like experiemntal art and music but not fiction.

There were some really cool tricks with this story.  All of the (unnamed–don’t get attached to them) characters are watching movies or are in the movies.  And so, in a series of what, infinite regresses? chance encounters? something, new characters are introduced, they watch a film (possibly of the people who were watching them?) they may or may not have sex and then the “camera” shifts to a new couple.

And I like the way these stories interlock or, more accurately, stubbornly refuse to interlock.  But it is devoid of any emotional resonance.

The other thing is that  there is no reason for the story to stop when it does.  It could have been a page shorter or thirty pages longer.  He could just go on and on creating characters and small scenes for them to inhabit (and yes this has to do with the emotional resonance of the story too).  So when it ends, even though the ending line is cool, it could just have easily been an excerpt.

Just another Robert Coover piece, I guess.

For ease of searching I include: matinee