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Archive for July, 2013

Peter Bagge–Reset (2013)

Posted in Alex Lifeson, Decadence, Drinking, Fears, Funny (ha ha), Geddy Lee, Graphic Novel, Neil Peart, Peter Bagge, Rush, Sex, Technology on July 11, 2013| 2 Comments »

resetSOUNDTRACK: RUSH “Garden Road” and “Fancy Dancer” (from Fifth Order of the Angels) (1974).

I mentioned this bootleg a few years ago, but it has recently been updated to include the missing songs.  (Huzzah!).

So this set from 1974 is pretty great–rocking, noisy, screaming solos–a very heavy show (and the crowd is quite appreciative).

These two songs never made it on any Rush albums.  They were written before Neil joined the band and, when asked, he said they never made it on an album because they were written before he joined the band (bitchy!).  But evidently the songs were quite popular when they toured.

“Fancy Dancer” opens with a staccato riff and lyrics about a woman who leaves him.  The second verse allows Alex to noodle while Geddy is singing (which is why I never really notice the lyrics).  The chorus has some big chords and reminds me in some ways of “Making Memories.”  But mostly this seems like a chance for Alex to solo and solo and solo (and for Neil to play…only a bass drum!  (for a few measures)).  The song is 3:43 and the solo is over a minute and a half.  Although the end has some cool fast short chords that the band would use very effectively on 2112.

“Garden Road” has a faster riff (very bluesy), which is interspersed with some chugga chugga guitars during the vocals.  The chorus is completely unintelligible to me.  “This Garden Road is Whoa!.”

A few other things about this bootleg which I neglected to mention.  The solo in Working Man incorporates some sections of what would become “By-Tor and the Snow Dog.”  And it’s really funny hearing Geddy say, “We’d like to do something from our album.”  It’s pretty amazing how far the band progressed from these rocking beginnings.

Download the whole thing here.

[READ: July 5, 2013] Reset

I recognized Bagge’s name, although I haven’t read his previous books.  I’m sure I’ve seen his work anthologized as his style is very familiar.  His drawings are dark (some might say ugly) and his characters always seem a little pained.

So it’s unsurprising that this book’s protagonist is Guy Krause, a former actor.  (His famous line is hilarious and I love that it is revealed very late in the story and then as a running joke).  He has recently come close to hitting bottom–his upcoming shows have been cancelled and his last resort is a reality show.  And when we first meet him, he is in a drunk driving class.

And that’s where Angela Minor comes in.  She offers Guy a chance to relive his life.  He’s obviously skeptical until she explains that it is a virtual experience.  They hook him up to a machine and he gets to try to change the virtual past.  This is all an experiment in seeing how people react to being able to change things that they fixate on.  It turns out the scientists have all kinds of information on him (because he is a celebrity) so it’s not a coincidence that they found him.

Guy balks.  Until she tells him how much they’ll pay him to do it.  Then he’s in. (more…)

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Maile Meloy–The Apprentices (2013)

Posted in Adventure, Communists, Culture Shock, Ebony Bones, Magic, Maile Meloy, Ofra Haza, Supernatural, Trilogy, War, YA Books on July 10, 2013| Leave a Comment »

apprenticesSOUNDTRACK: EBONY BONES-“I See I Say” (2013).

ebonyI don’t really know what to imagine about this album from this one song.

The song opens with a skittery sampled vocal chant of “I See I Say” bouncing around.  It has a vaguely Indian sound to it (and reminds me of Ofra Haza).

After a bout a minute the voices slow to a halt which made me think something new was afoot.  But no, the voices start again, with more layers of keyboards and what is more or less a lead vocal keening away.

Then there are some actual sung words (and people chanting I See I Say), making the song sound fuller and fuller.

At first it didn’t really sound like a song so much as an introduction to something, but after a few listens, I can hear that there’s a lot more going on than I realized.   I just can’t imagine what the rest of the album will sound like.

[READ: June 30, 2013] The Apprentices

This is the second book in a trilogy (what is it about trilogies?) that began with The Apothecary.

This book is set two years after the action of the first book.  The kids are 16 now and have not seen each other since. (The book helpfully fills in the things that we have all forgotten since we read the first book, like that Benjamin’s father gave Janie and everyone a forgetting potion so that they would stay out of danger).

Now Janie is back in America, attending a private school (on a scholarship) while her parents are back making movies.  I would have loved to see more of Janie’s school, believe it or not, but the little we do see if enough to set the action in motion.  Janie, a very smart girl and a whiz at math, is accused of cheating by her roommate and (sort of) friend.  The friend is jealous of Janie because her dad keeps talking about how smart Janie is (and consequently how un-smart his own daughter is).

Obviously Janie is upset, but she is more upset because she has been working on an experiment in the chemistry lab.  She has been trying to remove the salt from salt water.  She has been getting memories of her time with Benjamin and one of the things she remembered was the desalinator.  She has been piecing together the formula and has just had a breakthrough.  But what will happen to her stuff (which is actually the school’s stuff?)

Benjamin has also been sending Janie cryptic messages.  She finally realizes that there is a code in which he is letting her know where he is.  It turns out Benjamin and his father are in the jungle saving people. Benjamin’s father has been using his apothecary skills to create some healing potions that are saving lives in the war-torn jungle.  But their mission is secret and Benjamin’s father doesn’t know that Benjamin is communicating with her. (more…)

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Jhumpa Lahiri–“Brotherly Love” (New Yorker, June 10 & 17, 2013)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Arranged Marriage, Death, Drug Church, Excerpt, Jhumpa Lahiri, Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, Pregnancy, Racism, Short Story, Soundgarden, Travel, War on July 9, 2013| 1 Comment »

CV1_TNY_06_10_13Schossow.inddSOUNDTRACK: DRUG CHURCH-“Deconstructing Snapcase” (2013).

drugchurchYesterday I commented about another Drug Church song by saying I liked this one better.  What’s interesting is that this one is thirty seconds longer but seems shorter.

The song opens with big loud aggressive guitars (kind of early Soundgarden), but the vocals, which are screamed, are brighter that their other song, providing a  nice contrast.  But the thing that made me like this song more than “YouTube” is the fast bright guitar bridge, in which the guitars ring out in contrast to the heavy opening chords–it gives the song a lot of dynamics.

There’s a guitar solo, which surprised me for some reason, but it breaks up the song and reintroduces some of the earlier riffs.  It’s a good heavy song.

[READ: June 18, 2013] “Brotherly Love”

Lahiri has the last and longest story in this New Yorker issue that’s chock full of stories.  This one is some fifteen pages and is part of a novel.

I was gripped instantly by the story.  But I am glad that it is part of a novel as I feel there were parts of the beginning that seemed extraneous without more story to follow.  Or should I say, if it was just a short story, it could have been shorter.  The story is about two brothers, Subhash and Udayan.  Subhash is older by fifteen months but Udayan is the far more daring one.  Subhash is cautious and does everything his parents say, while Udayan flouts the rules at every opportunity.

The first transgression we see is when they climb the wall into the country club, where locals are pretty much excluded.  They were told they could get golf balls, so they hopped the fence and took what they could.  They also marveled at the manicured lawns and the beauty around them.  They returned regularly until they were caught–but luckily for them they were not turned in. (more…)

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Julie Hecht–“May I Touch Your Hair?” (Harper’s, July 2013)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Consumerism, Drug Church, Funny (ha ha), Harper's, Julie Hecht, Neurotics, NPR/PRI/PBS, Short Story, Summer, Unlikable main character, Unreliable narrator on July 8, 2013| Leave a Comment »

julySOUNDTRACK:DRUG CHURCH-“Reading YouTube Comments” (2013).

drugchurchI enjoyed the really noisy chaos of another Drug Church song that NPR played (“Deconstructing Snapcase”), but I really like the name of this one (although I can’t tell if it has anything to do with the lyrics–as the lyrics talk about walking with canes and using wheelchairs).

The song starts with thudding drums and angry vocals which are all about the singer’s ailments.  The chorus is fast and kind of repetitive, but fun to sing along to (decline, decline).  I enjoy the song for its aggressive, distorted sound–not quite metal, although I think it needs a bit more…something.

[READ: July 2, 2013] “May I Touch Your Hair?”

I recognized the name Julie Hecht but I couldn’t place her.  It was only after I read this whole story that I looked back at a review of something else I had read by her and I was pleased to see that I felt the exact same way about her narrator then as I did this time.

Hecht writes fiction with that seems like non-fiction.  Her narrator is first person and everything that she writes about seems very real–opinionated enough that you think she’s telling non-fiction.  Indeed, at times I had to confirm that it wasn’t simply an essay.

This story looks back at the narrator’s childhood.  Much of the story spends time at their beach house looking at all of the families who lived around them there.

There is not a lot to this story except really the narrator’s tone.  Little things come through like “Elinor was in her own upper-teenage world of grown-up girls in college.  She was studious as well as boy-crazy.”  That “boy-crazy” note is a bit of a judgment.  The narrator is very judgmental.  Like: “she got married at a young age, then made the mistake of having a baby right away.”  Or, “My mother told us she’d heard that Elinor had said to her three-year old child, ‘Your parents are young and want to go out, and you can’t expect us to be with you all the time.  We have our own lives.’  This was thought to be a bad thing to say to a child.”  I love that last line. (more…)

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Ben Hatke–Legends of Zita the Spacegirl (2012)

Posted in "Weird Al" Yankovic, Ben Folds, Ben Hatke, Bob Dylan, Children's Books, Dweezil Zappa, First Second :01, Frank Zappa, Funny (ha ha), Graphic Novel, Short Books, System of a Down, The Hives, The Strokes, The White Stripes on July 7, 2013| Leave a Comment »

zita2SOUNDTRACK:poodle “WEIRD AL” YANKOVIC–Poodle Hat (2003).

I think of Poodle hat as a good Al album.  It won a Grammy even (the true sign of quality, right?).  But its the only one of his albums (along with Polka arty) to not even go gold!  That’s pretty amazing given that he’s usually platinum.  I read that stat before listening again and I wondered why this album tanked so bad.  Was it the title or the cover or what?  And why do I think fondly of the record?  Well, it turns out I think fondly of the record because of the final track, “Genius in France” a Frank Zappa style parody (which I assume was not terribly endearing to many people either).  But what about the rest of the album:

Couch Potato.  It’s a good parody of Eminem, but I never thought the original was that good to begin with–it’s pretty repetitive with no real drama.  And while the lyrics are funny, so as a lead off track it’s not that great.  “Hardware Store” is a weird song–lots of crazy sound effects and backing vocalists.  I want to like it more than I do–the fast singing is great the lyrics are all kinda funny but it doesn’t really resonate–the chorus, perhaps is not that great.  “Trash Day” is a parody of a song by Nelly, which I don’t know.  I’ll now show off my musical prejudice by saying that a lot of these aggressive R&B/rap songs sound very similar with no real hook, which I think makes the parodies harder to enjoy.  “Party at the Leper Colony” just seems like a bad idea (especially for Al’s umpeenth album).  It’s a rockabilly type song (a style I don’t like anyway), so another thumbs down.

“Angry White Boy Polka”is the first bright ray on the disc–mixing aggressive metal songs in the polka style is a pretty great idea, especially System of a Down, The Hives and The White Stripes.  Twisting the style of The Strokes twist is a pretty great idea too.  I really enjoyed the way the angry songs are utterly lightened with silly sound effects.  It’s very funny.

“Wanna Be Ur Lovr” is a song I never much liked until seeing him perform it live.  It’s a sexy song made up entirely of lame come on lines.  It’s petty funny but the live version utterly blows it away.  “A Complicated Song” is a parody of Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated”.  It seems like it might be just a silly parody until the first verse turns out to be about eating too much cheese.  I laughed so hard to find that the first rhyme was “constipated”  The other two verses can’t possibly live it to it but that first one is a big highlight (toilet humor it may be, but it’s good toilet humor).  “Why Does This Always Happen to Me?” features Ben Folds on piano (the piano is very good).  The song is a series of complaints about minor things within the context of real tragedy.  It’s a funny idea but the presentation doesn’t seem to work somehow.

“Ode to a Superhero” is a surprise because it uses Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” as the musical basis for a song about Spiderman.  It seems like a sure fire hit after “The Saga Begins.”  And it works quite well.  “Bob” is a series of palindromes (see the title) done in the style of Bob Dylan.  It’s very clever.  “Ebay” has been mocked for being so similar to an actual eBay commercial, but I think its very funny.  I never liked the original but I find myself singing this every time I think of eBay.  “Genius in France” features Dweezil Zappa on guitar, and beyond that it gets so many Frank Zappa things right.  It is weird and crazy and spot-on.  I love to think that it may have made some Zappa fans out of Weird Al fans.  And if you’re a Zappa fan, you must listen to this to see just how many great Zappa musical moments he throws in here (including vocals styles and potty jokes).

It’s pretty interesting how the back half of the album is so much better than the first half (that’s no way to sell albums, Al).  I can totally see why this album didn’t sell all that well. And I’m a little bummed that I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would.

[READ: June 19, 2013] Legends of Zita the Spacegirl

I actually read this book first of the two (didn’t realize it was the second book in the series and, frankly from the title, how could I?).  But I’ll treat it like I read it second.

So this story picks up soon after the first ended.  But rather than Zita, we see a robot crawling through a junkyard.  The robot’s box says RECALLED and the name is Imprint-o-tron.  The robot sees a poster of Zita and is immediately overwhelmed by a crowd who is rushing to see her.  Imprint-o-tron paints itself to look like Zita as the crowd assembles.

And there we see, Piper introducing Zita, the girl who saved Scriptorius.  But she is nervous, and intimidated by the crowd and tells the truth, that it was Randy who blew up the bad guys.  But they aren’t buying it.  She signs autographs, gets exhausted and hides behind a rock where Imprint-o-tron sees her and immediately becomes her (but with circles instead of dots for eyes).  Zita delights in this doppelgänger and sends it out to do her singing work while she and Mouse run off to have fun.

But then the ambassador of the planet Lumponia informs them that  swarm of star hearts are heading for their planet and they as Zita for help.  Robot Zita agrees and when real Zita returns to the ship, robot Zita pushes her away and takes off with the crew. (more…)

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Ben Hatke–Zita the Spacegirl (2010)

Posted in "Weird Al" Yankovic, Adventure, Barenaked Ladies, Beastie Boys, Ben Hatke, Children's Books, Chumbawamba, Eddie Vedder, End of the World, Fantasy, First Second :01, Graphic Novel, Harvey Danger, Nine Inch Nails, Semisonic, Short Books, Terry Gilliam, The Rugburns on July 6, 2013| Leave a Comment »

zitaSOUNDTRACK: “WEIRD AL” YANKOVIC-Running with Scissors (1999).

Running_with_Scissors_(Weird_Al_Yankovic_album_-_cover_art)This is the first album Al released with is new look—LASIK surgery and long hair.  He looked quite different, but it didn’t diminish his song writing skills.  Running with Scissors is a pretty great collection of songs.

“The Saga Begins” is a genius parody taking the music of “American Pie” and merging it with the plot from Star Wars Episode I.  The way he retells the story is snarky and funny.  “My Baby’s in Love with Eddie Vedder” is a weird song—an accordion-based zydeco song about, well, a guy whose girl loves Eddie Vedder.  Vedder is kind of a weird person to pick (since he does make fun of him), although I guess it’s pretty mild abuse.  “Pretty Fly for a Rabbi” opens with a joke on a Def Leppard song (in Hebrew) but then moves on to “Pretty Fly for a White Guy.”  The original is pretty goofy and there’s not much Al could have done to it except this—changing it to being all about a rabbi. I like this version better than the original now.

The next track is the theme for The Weird Al Show.  It’s utter nonsense, but very funny.  And it packs a lot in to the 75 seconds that it lasts.  “Jerry Springer” is a parody of Barenaked Ladies’ “One Week.”  The original is pretty weird/funny, so this seems an odd choice, and yet Al’s specifics to the Jerry Springer show is pretty funny.  Of course I hate shows like that so I don’t love this song.

“Germs” is a style parody of Nine Inch nails (the song opens a like “Terrible Lie”, and then moves through some other songs).  The sound is uncanny in its soundalikeness (except perhaps the “microscopic bacteria” section which is a little too goofy sounding even for NIN.

“Polka Power” is one of the first medleys where the parodied songs seem utterly dated.  Like The Spice Girls, Harvey Danger, Backstreet Boys (which I only know because he says “Backstreet’s Back.” Smash Mouth.  Chumbawamba, Marchy Playground, and Semisonic.  Of course, there is also a Beastie Boys line (“Intergalactic”), but it’s a very era specific song.  “Your Horoscope for Today” is a ska song of horoscopes inspired by The Onion (which is hilarious).

Of course, nothing comes close to “Its All About the Pentiums,” Al’s first rap song about being a total dork  It is amazing—heavy guitars and lots of screaming.  It’s even more bad ass than the original.  And the smack talk is hilarious Asking about his computer: “You think your Commodore 64 is really neato.  What kind of chip you got in there, a Dorito?”).  I can listen to this song over and over.  It’s a wonderful precursor to “White and Nerdy.”  “Truck Drivin’ Song” has a remarkably deep voice for Al. It’s about driving a truck (as a transvestite).  The humor is childish but funny and with that voice it’s particularly so.  “Grapefruit Diet” is another series of jokes about being fat, but it works very well as a parody of “Zoot Suit Riot” with the jazzy horns and all.

That leaves “Albuquerque” an eleven, yes eleven, minute story song.  It’s a style parody of a song by The Rugburns which I didn’t know until recently (called Dick’s Automotive, but that song is much more “adult” than Al’s. The song is simple enough but the lyrics are wondrously absurd and very very funny.  And as it goes on and on and on you just marvel at the mind that created it.  And it’s catchy too.

Scissors is a great album which holds up quite well after 14 years.

[READ: June 23, 2013] Zita the Space Girl

I’d actually read the sequel to this book first, but I quickly found this first book and the family devoured it, too.

This is a charming and sweetly drawn series about a girl, Zita, who winds up in outer space.  As it opens, Zita is being a bit of a bully to her friend Joseph.  Not horrible but teasing in the way friends can do.  And when they find a giant meteor hole and a space-type gadget with a big red button on it, of course she threatens to push it in front to him,  He freaks out, but she does it anyhow.  And when she does, another dimension opens up and sucks Joseph away.  Oops.

So she pushes it again and winds up in the same place which she realizes is very very different from her own.  The thing that has Joseph is all tentacles in a diver’s helmet.  But that’s just one of the weird creatures here (as seen in Gilliam’s Guide to Sentient Species–which I take as a tribute to Terry Gilliam).  Like Strong-Strong, a large lumbering biped (who helps Zita), and a group of chicken creatures (who do not).  There’s also a man who plays a flute (called Piper) who may or may not be a friend.  She also meets a giant mouse named Pizzicato, but which Zita just calls Mouse.  Mouse is very sweet and communicates through a printer around its neck. (more…)

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McSweeney’s #38 (2011)

Posted in Adam Levin, Adventure, Alia Malek, All Songs Considered, Ariel Dorfman, Bisi Adjapon, Books about writers, Boredom, Canadian Content, Chanan Tigay, Culture Shock, Dan Guterman, Dave Eggers, David Henne, Death, Essays, Francois Mauriac, Jack Teagle, Jason Polan, Jen Statsky, Joey Latimer, John Moe, Jon Wurster, Marriage Trouble, McSweeney's, Morality, Nathan Englander, Nathaniel Rich, Paul Curtis, Peter Meehan, Peter Orner, Rachel B. Glaser, Religion, Roddy Doyle, Rory Douglas, San Fermin, Short Story, Sloan Schang, Steven Millhauser, The Mountain Goats, Violence, War on July 5, 2013| 1 Comment »

38SOUNDTRACK: SAN FERMIN-“Crueler Kind” (2013).
sanfermin-91f624c3b893c51669028614cc4bbf4973704a7c-s1

This was the final song that NPR played in their summer new music collection.  It was a band that Bob didn’t know, but he liked the song and then saw them live and put the song here.

It opens very simply, quietly with beautiful harmonies over a simple synth.  After about 45 seconds, the drums and horns (!) kick in and the backing harmony vocals take on more of a choral sound (AHHHH!) that punctuates rather than accompanies the vocals.

The main riff stems from that horn—a bass saxophone?  And yet during the verses, everything resorts to that pretty, mellow sound.

It’s a very interesting mix of musics, and it reminds me of some of the more experimental bands of the 1990s.  I’ll bet they would be fun to see live.  And I’d like to hear more from this album.

[READ: June 20, 2013] McSweeney’s #38

And with this book, I have now read all of the McSweeney’s issues (except that Mammoth Treasury which I will get to, probably by the end of the year).  This one was a great collection of fiction and non-fiction, it also had an inserted comic.  The book itself was paperback, with a nice, textured cover and a cool design for the numbers. In looking for a picture I learned that it came in two colors (the yellow that I received and a black cover with white lines).

It continues with the later issues’ less frivolous style (in that there’s nothing weird about the book) and throughout, the quality of the work is great.  I really enjoyed this book.  It opens with letters and contains color pictures, too.

Letters (more…)

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She Loves Me (Hamilton Murray Theater, Murray Dodge Hall, Princeton, NJ, June 20, 2013)

Posted in Acting, Dance, In the Good Old Summertime, Jerry Bock, Joe Masteroff, Marriage Trouble, Miklos Laszlo, Play (Drama), Romance, Sheldon Harnick, The Shop Around the Corner, Theater on July 4, 2013| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: June 20, 2013] She Loves Me

SheLovesMeI won free tickets to this show in Murray Dodge Hall, and olde theater in the heart of the Princeton University campus.  Sarah and I were delighted to discover that the theater held only 190 people and that our seats were in the fifth row!

This is student theater, but, as I said to Sarah, these are seriously good acting students (better than most of the students that I went to school with, anyhow).

She Loves Me is a musical based on the drama Parfumerie by Hungarian playwright Miklos Laszlo.  Before being adapted in 1963 as She Loves Me, (Music by Jerry Bock, Lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, Book by Joe Masteroff) it was previously adapted as the 1940 film The Shop Around the Corner and the 1949 musical In the Good Old Summertime.   It was also revisited in 1998 as You’ve Got Mail.

If you’ve seen any of these adaptations, yo know the story.  And if you haven’t, it is this: two shop workers who dislike each other are secretly each others’ pen pals.  In this version, they each write to a lonely hearts column, and plan to meet for the first time very soon.  It’s a simple enough story.  But what sold me in this version was the music—which was simple and catchy and very very funny. (more…)

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Lauren Graham–Someday, Someday Maybe (2013)

Posted in Acting, All Songs Considered, Black Francis, Frank Black, Funny (ha ha), Gilmore Girls, J.D. Salinger, Kim Deal, Lauren Graham, Parenthood, Pixies, Romance, The Huffington Post on July 3, 2013| Leave a Comment »

laurenSOUNDTRACK: PIXIES-“Bagboy” (2013).

pixies-bagboyThe first Pixies song in nine years…doesn’t feature Kim Deal on it.  Which is kind of a shame.  She was with them for a lot of the recent tours, but she went back to the Breeders recently.  I assume that everyone else from the lineup is still in the band.

But the real question is what does the song sound like?  Well, to me it doesn’t sound like the Pixies.  It sounds very much like a 90s song, but by… some other bands of the time.  Even Frank Black’s (or is it Black Francis’) voice sounds different—less brittle (despite the brittleness of what he is saying).

The song begins with keyboards and a kind of dance (electronic) drum sound.  I actually thought I clicked the wrong link when it started.  There’s chanted backing vocals while Black is singing/talking.  It all sounds very familiar but not like the Pixies.  Even the guitars sound different–less bright with a bit more flash in the solos.

The part that does sound like the Pixies is the chorus which has soaring guitars and a female singer (unknown to me at this point but she sounds a lot like Deal) singing “bagboy” while Black shouts the same.  The chorus is a comforting reminder of the Pixies’ sound.

I understand that in nine years (and countless Frank Black albums) the Pixies are going to sound different.  And while the tone is definitely Pixies, something is missing from the track, which I hope the rest of the album (should there be one) replaces.

[READ: June 28, 2013] Someday, Someday Maybe

I’ve been a fan of Lauren Graham the actress since I had a major (age appropriate) crush on her during The Gilmore Girls.  I haven’t seen everything she’s been in, but I also enjoy Parenthood quite a bit and initially tuned in because of her.  And now she’s written a book.

This book is pretty far from my usual thing (and in an interview on Huffington Post she says she doesn’t think many men will read the book).  I gather they won’t but I’m glad I did.

Set in 19995, Graham creates a wonderfully flawed character in Franny, a struggling actress who has moved to New York City and has given herself three years to become successful.  At the end of the three years, if she hasn’t made it, she’ll move back to Chicago to be with her long-term boyfriend, Clark.

She lives in Brooklyn with her best friend who is also in the business but as a production assistant (it’s nice to have them not be fighting for the same jobs).  They recently added a new roommate Dan, a writer who seems oblivious to the women (he is so focused on his screenplay that he doesn’t even seem to notice them watching TV).  It seemed apparent from the get go that there was going to be a romantic interest there.  And there was.

But first we get to see Franny’s trials and tribulations starting two and a half months until her deadline.  She’s still taking acting classes, and while she hasn’t gotten offered anything yet, she seems to be well-regarded in class.  And, she has the big showcase coming up—the performance when agents come to watch them do their thing.

And then, hurrah! (more…)

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Larry Correia–“The Grimnoir Chronicles: Detroit Christmas” (2011)

Posted in Adventure, All Songs Considered, Alternate Reality, Bronson Pinchot, Fantasy, Larry Correia, Magic, Mystery, Noir, Short Story, Two Inch Astronaut, Violence on July 2, 2013| Leave a Comment »

baen logotransSmallSOUNDTRACK: TWO INCH ASTRONAUT-”Little Short Guy” (2013).

two-inch-astronaut-cover-de5df21ccbfbcb75c6d6c83315becf109f32f74e-s1Two Inch Astronaut made it into two segments of NPR’s Music section this week.  Yesterday was Lars’ pick, today is Robin Hilton’s.

This song has a very funny title which may have something to do with the lyrics (which I don’t really understand) or it may be because the song is less than 90 seconds long.

It begins with some slow chugging chords (and something about holding you hair back). Twenty seconds in, the song bursts forth with louder guitars and noisier vocals. Twenty seconds later, the third part of the song mellows things out some, with quieter vocals and chiming guitars.  But by the one minute mark the loudness is back.  And then the song ends.

Talk about packing a lot into a short song.  I don’t think it would sell anyone on the band, but I’ll bet it sounds great in the midst of the album.

[READ: June 27, 2013] “The Grimnoir Chronicles: Detroit Christmas”

This short story is a brief prequel to the content of Hard Magic.  In Hard Magic Sullivan refers to the twins that he captured and wonders if they count as one capture or two.  Well, here’s the story of that capture.

It has all of the features that I grew to love in the novel (I even read it as close to Bronson Pinchot’s voice as I could).  And while the story was satisfying, it didn’t have any of the supporting cast who really flesh out the story.  True, this story is exclusively about Sullivan so that point is moot.  But it’s clear that while Sullivan is the star of the story he’s not really the heart.

The story is set in Detroit, Christmas Day 1931.  And we see Sullivan in the middle of a huge battle with the Maplethorpe Brothers and their gang.  There’s Snowball, the man who can control the temperature (and get ice to shoot from his fingers.  And there’s Johnny Bones, the ringleader, so-called for his ability to stretch and de-form his bones into any shape–or sharpness–he wants.

The story flashes back to two days earlier, when a lady walked into his office.  Emily Fordyce is looking for her husband, Arthur.  He was a powerful healer and is believed to be murdered.  But she thinks that he was kidnapped, perhaps by a gang who needs a healer.  The pay she offered Sullivan was very, very good,so he took the case. (more…)

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