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Archive for August, 2012

Elizabeth Benedict–“Paris in the Twenties” (Narrative Magazine, Spring 2012)

Posted in Annie Hall, Consumerism, Death Wish, Elizabeth Benedict, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kiss, Marriage Trouble, Narrative, Nostalgia, Taxi Driver on August 21, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: KISS-Smashes, Thrashes + Hits (1988).

This was Kiss’ second greatest hits collection (Double Platinum being the first).  This was before there were literally hundreds of Kiss Greatest Hits collections.  Seriously, look at the list on AllMusic.  This was also the era in which bands would release a greatest hits collection and include one song to sucker fans into buying it.  And we did.

Kiss also re-recorded a bunch of songs for this disc (something they would do many times in the future as well).  I’m not exactly sure what has been re-recorded, although the one obvious change is that Eric Carr sings on “Beth.”  But some of the other songs get tweaks as well.

As for the two new songs, it seems like maybe they were leftovers from the Crazy Nights sessions–they are poppy with keyboards.  “Let’s Put the X in Sex” sounds a lot like Robert Palmer, which is pretty embarrassing.  Although interestingly, the song itself seems to serve as a model for a couple of songs on Hot in the Shade (as if maybe they thought Kiss fans wouldn’t buy the greatest hits?).  “(You Make Me) Rock Hard” is another okay song (which sounds a lot like another song on Hot in the Shade).  Both of these songs are just filled with sex similes, I swear they have more than any other writers in the world.  Both songs would be better without those pesky keyboards.  I rather liked the songs at the time as they are both better than anything on Crazy Nights, although neither one has held up all that well.

And “Beth,”  Kiss’ biggest hit, which may be largely forgotten by the general public by now, has Eric Carr on vocals.  He sounds a bit like Peter Criss, but without Criss’ years of hard living in his voice.  It’s a weird choice, although I understand it from a business standpoint–which is clearly more important than the music, right?

[READ: August 10, 2012] “Paris in the Twenties”

This story starts out with a paragraph that I found very confusingly written.  There’s a very long sentence with several clauses that, after reading the story, make perfect sense, but which up front are more than a little confusing.  The upshot of that paragraph is that in 1972, when the narrator was a senior in high school, a whole bunch of bad things happened to her in a short period of time–just before they were to hear which of the Seven Sisters had accepted them.

The catalyst was that her father threw a tumbler of scotch at the giant window of their penthouse apartment.  The window shattered but did not fall and the glass came back into the room.  The irony of course is that he had chosen the apartment for the gorgeous panoramic views those windows afforded.  Her father had been riled up about the state of the world, and felt that the sexual revolution meant that monogamy was outdated.

Their father was also very conscious of wealth and was very conscious of appearing wealthy–even if “he usually had more credit than money and now had very little of either.”

The narrator escaped into fantasies of Paris in the twenties–she read A Moveable Feast and was determined to move to Paris even if the party was over decades ago. (more…)

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William Gaddis–[Week 9] JR [#OccupyGaddis pages 610-668] (1975)

Posted in #OccupyGaddis, Big Books, Books about music, Death, Frank Black, Huh?, Ice Cream, Marriage Trouble, Native Americans, Pixies, Radio, Religion, Sex on August 20, 2012| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: FRANK BLACK-“Headache” (1994).

Frank Black is Black Francis from the Pixies.  When the Pixies disbanded, Black set out on  a solo career.  He’s got some great songs under the Frank Black moniker and this is one of them.

This is an acoustic guitar rocker, that sounds perfectly nineties.  It builds over a series of verses, getting louder and faster with backing vocals added as the song goes along.  What’s interesting is that there’s no real chorus to the song.  The verses are more or less the choruses, although that doesn’t quite seem right either.  But after the verses, there are these quieter interlude pieces that are kind of bridges but not really.

But regardless of all of that, the song is catchy as anything (especially for a song that includes the word cranium–incorrectly used–“My heart’s crammed in my cranium”).

Wow, i thought that Black Francis has been quiet all these years, and yet I see that he has been releasing an album a year for a decade.  Talk about under the radar.

[READ: Week of August 20, 2012] JR Week 9

Holy cow, this week starts off with a lot of fun chaos in the Grynzspan apartment.  And there’s a return of lots of characters, too!  The long story arc seems to return to whence it started–the “Bast apartment,” although there are many changes afoot there.  And, for those keeping score at home, we finally get to return to the original Bast House–where kids have sex and shit in pianos.

But first the poor delivery man is back with his gross flowers.  [Simon’s comments from last week have some great ideas about the plastic flowers, too, by the way].  But before that goes anywhere, Eigen shows up to the apartment–the first time he’s been here in a while.  And as he’s coming in the door, he is given a summons for Mr Grynzspan (whom the police assume he is).  Eigen tries to control the crowd and his temper, but he’s fighting with everyone.  In particular, he’s fighting with Rhoda, who has some great lines here.  When asked if she is Mr Bast: “Man look at these I mean do I look like Mister anybody?”  When Eigen says her name “was Rhoda right,” she says “What do you mean was,” and every time Eigen puts his hands near or on her, “I said I can dry there myself.”  Things settle down and Rhoda regales Tom with the story of the shipwreck they had last night, and she’s glad that Chairman Meow isn’t drownded (610).

Then Amy calls looking for jack.  She’s back from Geneva but needs a few days to straighten out things before seeing him.  Rhoda says that Emily is someone Jack doesn’t want to see   Eigen says she’s the only think holding him together.  They repeat the same statements about Gibbs’ book.  Rhoda says that Tom is this “big important novelist” but he can’t see that Gibbs hates his own book and feels pressure from Emily/Amy. (more…)

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Mary Miley Theobald–“Putting the Red in Recoats” (Colonial Williamsburg, Summer 2012)

Posted in 18th Century, Colonial Williamsburg, Essays, Field Recordings, Field Recordings, Food, History, Mary Miley Theobald, Metric, NPR/PRI/PBS, Pirates, Yuck! on August 19, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: METRIC-“Synthetica” (Field Recordings, June 20, 2012).

After playing the Sasquatch festival, Emily Haines and James Shaw of Metric went behind the stadium and played a beautiful acoustic rendition of the title song from their latest album.  This Field Recording [Metric In A Non-Synthetic Situation] is just so wide open as to be inconceivable–especially since they’d just played a festival.

Metric make beautiful music which is rocking and usually full of all manner of electronic noises.  To hear Haines’ voice stripped from any effects shows just what a great and interesting voice she has.   It’s always nice to hear the song underneath the song.  This is a great version of the song.  Watch it here.

[READ: July 25, 2012] “Putting the Red in Redcoats”

Have you ever thought about how the redcoats’ coats became red?  No, me either.  Well, amazingly, it came from the Cochineal, the same bug that is still used today to color foods.

Cochineal bugs are pretty bizarre.  The female lives her entire life on a prickly pear cactus.  When she hatches, she clamps onto the prickly pear and starts feeding.  She grows to the size of a head of a pin. but never leaves the spot.  The male flies around, but only lives for a week.  The female lays eggs and the babies continue the process.

Although she is immobile, she is also armed with carminic acid, which predators don’t like.  Carminic acid is a vibrant red colorant.  Aztecs first mined this amazing color, which naturally impressed Spanish conquistadores who wanted to take it for themselves.  And they made a lot of money selling it to Europe.  But the Spanish never told anyone that the color came from bugs–they kept the secret for themselves.

Of course pirates and privateers would often hijack ships (one score captured 27 tons of cochineal!). (more…)

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Ivor Noël Hume–“Mecklenburg’s Declaration of Independence” (Colonial Williamsburg, Summer 2012)

Posted in 18th Century, 19th Century, Colonial Williamsburg, Essays, Field Recordings, Field Recordings, History, Ivor Noël Hume, Now, Now, NPR/PRI/PBS on August 18, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: NOW, NOW-“But I Do” (Field Recordings, August 8, 2012).

This is an NPR Field Recording, [Now Now at Graffiti Park]which means they brought equipment to Graffiti Park in Texas and recorded Now, Now playing this song live.  You can watch the video here.

The video opens with the band lugging their gear into the weird little foundation of space.  (This explains why there are no drums, clearly).  And so the band with two guitars and a xylophone (and a shaker) play their song and sound great doing it.  This is something of a stripped down version of the bands usually more shoegazery sound, but even in this format the band sounds great–the song is catchy, the melody is pretty and their harmonies are great.

I haven’t heard the original of this, but this is now the third Now, Now song that I’ve really enjoyed.

[READ: August 1, 2012] “Mecklenburg’s Declaration of Independence”

The previous issue of Colonial Williamsburg surprised me with several articles that I found really interesting.  Although this issue was filled with a little more about current local happenings (bulldozers and updates) they still managed to pack in a number of interesting articles.

According to this article, in 1775 Captain James Jack delivered a document to the Second Continental Congress.  On May 19, 1775, select officers from North Carolina, seeing the kind of fighting that was happening against the British in Massachusetts made up several resolves.  The fist stated:

We hearby absolve ourselves from all allegiance to the British Crown, and abjure all political connection, contract, or association, with that nation, who have wantonly trampled on our rights and liberties, and inhumanely shed the blood of American patriots at Lexington.

This “declaration of independence:” preceded Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence by fourteen months.  The document never reached its destination in the intended form and it was almost forgotten.

But then in 1819, the editor of the Raleigh Register and North Carolina Gazette wrote about this “Mecklenburg Declaration.”  The news surprised John Adams who had never heard of the document.  Adams praised the document (Adams didn’t really like Jefferson).  But Jefferson called it questionable: “I believe it spurious.”  This led to an intrastate rivalry with Virginia claiming the Declaration of Independence as the true one and North Carolina claiming the Declaration of Independence a plagiarism!  Jefferson even went as far as to question the patriotism of North Carolinians.

The controversy is complicated by a document from May 31 a facsimile of which seems to show signatures cut from court records and imitations of the designer’s handwriting.

It’s all somewhat moot as the Continental Congress applauded the intention of the letter but felt that adopting the Mecklenburg resolves was premature.  And therefore it was not a usurper of the actual Declaration of Independence.  But in North Carolina, the document is held up as official.  It became a page of official North Carolina history in 1831 and in 1861, the state voted  to add the date to the state flag.

American history caught up in 1954 when President Eisenhower acknowledged the men who signed the “Mecklenburg Declaration.”  Who knew?

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XXX Summer Olympic Games–Part Deux (2012)

Posted in Archery, Biking, Cycling, Fencing, Handball, Judo, Modern Pentathlon, Olympics, Rhythmic Gymnastics, Shooting, Speed Walking, Swimming, Synchronized Swimming, Water Polo on August 17, 2012| Leave a Comment »

[WATCHED: August 6-August 15, 2012] XXX Summer Games continued

The Olympics finally ended in our house.  Meaning we taped the closing ceremonies and only got around to watching them (well, fast forwarding through them) a couple of days ago.

I’m not sure what it was about this year’s Olympics, but I was really on board with them.  In past years I haven’t watched nearly as much.  I’d say it had something to do with my kids, but they weren’t really that interested.  They typically played with things while the games were on.  My son wanted to watch Tae Kwon Do and my daughter wanted to watch “the beautiful diving.”  But they wouldn’t really hang around too much during most of the events.  Nevertheless, I was pretty happy to have been able to watch as much coverage as I did.  It became something of an obsession to be able to watch as many obscure sports as possible.  And even if I didn’t watch everything (the FF button is my friend), I enjoyed so many unlikely sports this year.

Since the last Olympics post we had a whole new breed of events that we got to enjoy: (more…)

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Amy Parker–“Rainy Season” (Narrative Magazine, Winter 2012)

Posted in Adventure, Amy Parker, Boredom, Drinking, Drugs, Kiss, Narrative, Sex, Short Story, Van Halen on August 16, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: KISS-Crazy Nights (1987).

I’m going to make a bold statement here—Crazy Nights is worse than The Elder.  Whereas The Elder was a mistake–weird songs, a bizarre concept, it showed some pretty ballsy moves.  Crazy Nights on the other hand is just a pandering mess.  There’s keyboards.  Keyboards!  The band has always been money makers (Gene Simmons’ face could be on the $100), but at least usually their music would find its own version of poppiness.  But this album sounds like any generic metal album from the late 80s.

“Crazy Crazy Nights” is an obnoxiously poppy sell-out of a song (although it is at least catchy, but man…).  “Fight Hell to Hold You” is the exception to the disc, a solid song from Paul with a good chorus.  But “Bang Bang You” is as dumb as it sounds.  It has cheesy keyboards, a lame riff and even has the audacity to reference “Love Gun.”  It’s hard to fault Bruce Kulick for his wild playing, but it seems so out of place on this disc–as if his crazy solos will make the album heavier.  Much like on Asylum, he gets a song to wail on the opening: “No No No” which is sort of winning by virtue of its non-stop propulsion (like say, “Hot for Teacher”).  But it’s not really a song so much as a series of connected sounds.

  “Come Hell or High Water” is pretty close to being a good song, perhaps the rest of the album taints this one too.  What’s especially crazy about the keyboards on “My Way” is that they sounds straight out of Van Halen’s 1984. [None of this is to imply I don’t like Van Halen, I just don’t want Kiss sounding like them].  “When Your Walls Come Down” feels heavy in comparison to the rest of the disc, especially when followed by the super-ballad “Reason to Live” (which despite myself I kind of like).  “Good Girl Gone Bad” is generic lyrically and musically.  “Turn on the Night” brings more cheese and more keyboards.   And “Thief in the Night” ends the disc on a reasonably high note.  But the problem is that the music is such generic pop metal that it’s hard to be inspired by any of it.

I’m kind of surprised Kulick stuck around during this–two albums in a row!.  Although he did get to show off his squealing chops, so maybe he was happy.

[READ: August 10, 2012] “Rainy Season”

This story came in second place in the Narrative Magazine Fall contest.  I had been putting off reading it because it was quite long and I didn’t really have enough time to devote to it.  When that time finally arrived, I was glad I waited.

This is a story about Jill and Maizie.  Their father works at the Thailand consulate (something to do with drugs).  And so the girls have been living in a gated compound for three months in Chaing Mai, Thailand. They are bored out of their minds.  They are not permitted to leave the compound, they are the only Americans around and all they can really do is watch Gone with the Wind (which they have memorized).  The girls have been trying to make the best of things, although it’s not always easy.  Especially given the way their father is.

Their parents got divorced some time ago and the girls have never lived in the same place for more than two years.  What’s worse is that their father is working all the time.  So when he is around, he’s not really around for them.  He is very strict about arbitrary things but is completely blind to others: “Maizie and Jill aren’t allowed to pierce their ears until they’re sixteen, he says. But he goes on trips to the Golden Triangle and leaves them alone in the house.”

Maizie is younger and she is super cute with comment-worthy blonde hair.  She gets away with a lot.  Jill is older.  She is no longer cute and she is resentful of both her father and her sister.  Of course, they only have each other, which Jill resents a bit too. (more…)

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McSweeney’s #40 (2012)

Posted in Adam Levin, Amy Fusselman, Calvin Godfrey, Culture Shock, David Vann, Death, Essays, Etgar Keret, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Graphic Novel, History, Humiliation, Jack Pendarvis, Kevin Moffett, Kiss, Marriage (Happy), Marriage Trouble, McSweeney's, Nathan C. Martin, Neil Gaiman, Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, Short Story, Tom O'Donnell, Translation, Van Halen, Violence on August 15, 2012| 2 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: KISS-Asylum (1985).

This series of mid-80s Kiss CDs is regarded pretty poorly.  In fact, I believe that Gene and Paul have distanced themselves from Asylum.  And yet, despite its pop metal vine and really dayglo appearance, there’s some good stuff on it.  The solos are really notable on this disc.  Bruce Kulick has taken over lead guitar duties and he is wailing maniac.  He has speed and flash and he, frankly, really stand out (not always in a good way) in these songs.  His solos seem to signal a shift to a more pop heavy metal sound.

The disc opens with a pounding drum salvo and aggressive guitars!  “King of the Mountain” is a classic Kiss song—loud, with a great sing a long chorus from Paul.  “Anyway You Slice It” also rocks pretty hard, one of Gene’s fast, sex songs.  But man I hate songs that break down to just vocals and drums. “Who Wants to Be Lonely” seems like a ballad—lyrically and all—but it’s actually a pretty heavy song, again, perfectly suited for Paul’s voice.  “Trial By Fire” is the first song that really falters.  A generic anthem with the really lame chugga chugga guitars that Kiss would really push in this era.  “I’m Alive” opens with more crazy drumming and wild soloing and for all the world sounds like mid 80s Van Halen.  Until Paul belts out a fast vocal line.  This is a fast, aggressive song with a great chorus.

“Love’s a Dirty Weapon” almost turns into a great song—the chorus is just a little lacking.  And there’s that other part with just drums and a guitar solo—again, very Van Halen, which is good for Van Halen, but sounds really weird for Kiss.  I should hate “Tears Are Falling,” it’s got the chug chug chug guitars, and very little else, but I love a good Paul ballad—when he starts wailing at the end, it’s pretty great.  I am aware that the lyrics suck, yes.  But the solo is more like old school Kiss.  “Secretly Cruel” is cheesy, but delightfully so, and actually sounds like Kiss of old as well.  “Radar for Love” is an awkward song that never quite flows the way it wants.  It’s a good song that shows them branching out, though.  “UH! All Night” is a, well, look at the title.  It’s the kind of throwaway song that is so over-the-top ridiculous that it comes back around to be kind of fun.  And I imagine that some fans are still singing that chorus to themselves.  “When you work all day you gotta Uh all night.”  No one ever said Kiss was classy.  Note:  I listened to this song a week ago and that frikkin chorus is STILL in my head.

[READ: August 11, 2012] McSweeney’s #40

This issue came in a double pack–with a paperback issue of the magazine and a hardback edition of In My Home There Is No More Sorrow by Rick Bass.  I have not yet read Bass’ book [UPDATE: read it at the end of July 2013], because it sounds really depressing [UPDATE: It was].  But I do hope to get to it before the end of the year.  This issue has a few short stories and  a non-fiction at the beginning.  The entire back half of the journal is devoted to the January 25 uprising in Egypt.  It is full of testament and testimony about the event from all kinds of people–bloggers, poets, musicians.  It’s pretty profound–and almost seems like having a silly story in the journal is inappropriate.

As has been the trend lately, the journal also opens up with a series of letters. (more…)

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Paula Fox–Desperate Characters (1970)

Posted in Boredom, Cats, David Foster Wallace, Fears, Jonathan Franzen, Kiss, Marriage Trouble, Paula Fox, Short Books, Tom Bissell, William Gaddis, Zadie Smith on August 14, 2012| 2 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: KISS-Animalize (1984).

This year, 1984, was the first time that I saw Kiss live.  Sadly I remember more about the opening band (Loudness) asking if New York was having a good time (and the fans screaming that we were in New Jersey). But I still have my booklet from the show and I do remember a few things from the show (again, sadly they were not in makeup).  So this album holds a special place for me, even though in retrospect it’s not as good as Lick It Up.

“I’ve Had Enough (Into the Fire)” starts the album off with a bang—blistering solos from new guitarist Mark St. John.  But, as with Lick It Up, the album for me is overshadowed by the (massive) single.  “Heaven’s On Fire.”  It’s such a lame little sing-along (and yes I do remember that song from 1984 show—Paul really milked it).  But man it’s such a bad song.  Musically, “Burn Bitch Burn” is interesting, but what were they thinking with those lyrics “I want to put my log in your fire place…burn bitch burn?”  That’s a far cry from “I am the doctor of love.”  “Get All You Can Take” is, to my knowledge, the first time Kiss has said the word fuck in a song (“What fucking difference does it make?” Is sung by the deeper response voices in the chorus.  It’s a catchy song with an interesting riff.  “Lonely is the Hunter” has a kind of 70s southern rock feel.  It also seems to be calling back to some earlier songs in the style of singing—which only reminds you how much better the earlier song was.   The band is relying a lot on call and response vocals on this album.  And they’re okay but seem like a something of a crutch..

“Under the Gun” continues as another sort of generic fast rocker from this era.  “Thrills in the Night” is one of my favorite songs on the disc–it sounds so much like Kiss of the 70s.  And with Paul’s vocals and the guitars, this could have come off of his solo album.  “While the City Sleeps”  is a fairly uninspired Gene song.   None of these songs are bad, really, they’re just not as exciting as they might be.  “Murder in High Heels” has more of that 70s rock swagger that Gene likes to pull off.  It’s just not always clear that the 70s swagger rock works well with the heaviness of other songs on the record, like the band wasn’t sure which direction to go in.  So even though this disc is the one that brought me back to Kiss, it has some good songs, but it doesn’t really hold up all that well.

[READ: August 1, 2012] Desperate Characters

David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen and Tom Bissell have all championed this book.  Bissell was instrumental in getting it republished once it went out of print.  Franzen wrote the introduction to the newly published version.  David Foster Wallace blurbed the book: “A towering landmark of postwar Realism….A sustained work of prose so lucid and fine it seems less written than carved.”  It was also on his syllabus.  Zadie Smith has also written favorably about Fox’s fiction.

So why did it take me so long to read this book?  (I read the original version, which is what the library had.  I’m curious about Franzen’s introduction and will get to it eventually).

S. knows Paula Fox as a children’s author, which surprised me even more when I read the grittiness of this book.

It is submerged in downtrodden New York City of the late 60s, where people throw garbage out their windows, where racial tensions run high and where everything feels dirty.  This powerful description late in the book sums up the attitude about the City:

They drove through miles of Queens, where factories, warehouses, and gas stations squeezed up against two-story, two-family houses so mean and shabby that, by contrast, the ranks of uniform and tidy tombstones rising from cemetery islets that thrust up among the dwellings seemed to offer a more humane future. Sidewalks, brutal slabs of cracked cement, ran for a block or two, then inexplicably petered out, and along the center of the tarmac streets, short lengths of old trolley tracks occasionally gleamed among the potholes. Here and there, the skeletons of a vast new apartment complex sat on the rent ground; tree roots and rocks and earth rolled up around its foundation. Cries of boredom and rage were scrawled across the walls of factories, and among these threats and imprecations, invitations and anatomy lessons, the face of an Alabama presidential candidate stared with sooty dead eyes from his campaign posters, claiming this territory as his own. His country, warned the poster – vote for him – pathology calling tenderly to pathology. [For those ignorant of history like me, that candidate was George Wallace.  This was his third time running, this time as part of the American Independent Party].

But that’s just the descriptions.  What is this story about?  Simply, it is about Otto and Sophie Bentwood, a successful childless couple living in Brooklyn.  Otto is a lawyer, and, Sophie is a successful translator (I liked that Sophie was employed and not “just” a housewife).  But Sophie hasn’t felt up to translating lately and Otto’s successful practice hits a bump when long time partner Charley decides to leave to work on more important causes.

Otto is rather cut off emotionally–Charley has been his friend and partner for decades yet he can barely muster a proper goodbye when he steps out the door.  And while Otto and Sophie are mostly happy, he has more or less pushed her into the arms of another man.  She looks back on this brief affair with fondness.  However, the fact that the affair is never suspected and the fact that it ended the way it did are just more indignities that Sophie has to suffer.

But what sets off the action in the story is an act of kindness.  Sophie sees a cat that is hanging around the alley behind their brownstone.  Amid the people throwing garbage out the window and hanging up sheets to act as curtains, Sophie decides to do a nice deed for this cat.  She brings it some milk. It hungrily laps up the milk and when Sophie goes to pet it, it bites her really hard on the hand.  And literally the rest of the story follows the swelling of her hand. (more…)

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William Gaddis–[Week 8] JR [#OccupyGaddis pages 535-610] (1975)

Posted in #OccupyGaddis, Anton Bruckner, Aristotle, Big Books, Books about music, Books about writers, Death, Edmund Spencer, Environmentalism, Huh?, Jack London, Mark Twain, Marriage Trouble, Native Americans, Politicians, Radio, Religion, Research, Scholarship, Sex, Talking Heads, The Beautiful South, Ween on August 13, 2012| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE BEAUTIFUL SOUTH-“Dumb” (1988).

About five years ago I mentioned all of The Beautiful South records in one post.  But I didn’t really talk about them all that much.

This comes from one of my favorite Beautiful South records–I like all the songs equally, but I often have this song in my head.  And the reason I picked it right now is because Paul Heaton sings about a bunch of things each one ending with “either you are simply beautiful or I am simply dumb.”

And these are: “It doesn’t take a mathematician to add a simple sum”; “It doesn’t take a labrador to show a blind man sun”; and this one: “It doesn’t take Robert The Bruce to see the web you’ve spun.”

I had no idea who Robert the Bruce was and I never bothered to look it up.  And yet, as you will see below in the post, Robert the Bruce is mentioned in JR!  I was flabbergasted.  And this song immediately popped into my head.

And that’s not a bad thing.  It’s a pretty piano ballad with a seemingly negative chorus (dumb, dumb, dumb) despite its positive message.  There’s also a beautiful ending: “The sun, the sky, the moon, the stars/Jupiter, Neptune and Mars/All these things I clearly see/It don’t take a telescope for you to love me.”  The songs ends with Jacqui Abbot’s lovely echo of this stanza.

The Beautiful South were a great band, they broke up a few years ago.  Paul Heaton has a number of solo albums out but they’re not available in the states, so…

[READ: Week of August 6, 2012] JR Week 8

This week’s read finds us primarily in the apartment.  We see bast return home and fool around with Rhoda before he goes off on his trip to the funeral.  We see Gibbs come in and try (in vain) to get work done.  We actually get to see Gibbs’ magnum opus (or parts of it), and we see him fall off the high that he felt with Emily.

There’s a lot of funny stuff in this week’s read.  It seems like the darker the story gets, the more childish jokes Gaddis throws in there.  Seeing Gibbs unable to work on his manuscript because of all of the (real and fake) distractions is simultaneously hilarious and spot on.  And also, the plotlines are really revving up now.  JR Corp is starting to see some pushback on their deals, and a number of outsiders are starting to get angry.  There’s bound to be a collapse of some sort soon.  I’m also starting to think that with all of the ellipses in the book that it will end with a dot dot dot.

As we resume, Davidoff and Bast are still talking.  Davidoff tells Bast “Don’t worry about” something [Thanks to Simon for pointing out this expression–I recognized that Davidoff always says “brush fires,” but not the don’t worry about it].  He is concerned that Bast’s hearing aid isn’t turned up (ha), but that the Boss [JR] wants Bast’s signature on any expenditures over $2,000 (It was originally $200, but Davidoff said Bast would get writer’s cramp).  He explains the title change in the magazine from Her to She–passive to active readership–will cost $14,000.  There’s also $27,000 for a new logo.  And the logos are awesomely cheesy–hard to believe they paid $27,000 for them.  They revolve around the dollar sign, with the least offensive one making a J and R out of the top and bottom of the S–the others have a snake, or breasts or thumbing your nose or even someone behind bars.  They pick the least offensive one that says Just Rite in a dollar sign (“something patriotic about the dollar sign”).  They’re going to put them on half a million matchbooks. (more…)

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Sam Lipsyte–“Get a Head of Steam for Your Self-Esteem” (This Land, April 2011)

Posted in "Weird Al" Yankovic, Comedy Bang Bang!, Funny (ha ha), Reggie Makes Music, Reggie Watts, Sam Lipsyte, Tenacious D, This Land on August 12, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: “WEIRD AL” YANKOVIC and REGGIE WATTS-Reggie makes Music on IFC (2012).

“Weird Al” is going to be on Comedy Bang Bang this week.  And to tie in with his appearance, Al (and Tenacious D, who are in the video but don’t really do anything) performed a song with Reggie.  Specifically, Reggie does some beatboxing while Al wails on the accordion.

There’s nothing funny about it (well, actually there is, although there are no words), but Al shows how an accordion should be played!

If you like your polka fast and furious, check it out.

[READ: August 6, 2012] “Get a Head of Steam for Your Self-Esteem”

I’ve enjoyed Sam Lipsyte’s humor quite a lot.  This is a very short jokey piece in This Land.  This is the second piece I’ve read in This Land, not bad for a publication I’d never heard of before the first one.

So this is a “letter of affirmation.”  As Lipsyte’s introduction explains:

Write a note of affirmation with a good fountain pen and thick creamy paper and put it in your purse, wallet or lunch, or else simply text the message. The example below is one I use for myself, but you may use it as a model, substituting details as needed. (more…)

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