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Archive for November, 2013

Tony Abbott–Goofballs #3: Superhero Silliness (2012)

Posted in Adventure, C., Children's Books, Funny (ha ha), Kids Corner, Lunch Money, Mystery, Short Books, T., Tony Abbott, WXPN 88.5 FM--Philadelphia, PA on November 30, 2013| Leave a Comment »

gb3SOUNDTRACK: LUNCH MONEY-“Ate too Much of My Favorite Food” (2009).

lunchmoneySurely everyone has experienced this horrible feeling–you love some kind of food so much that you eat too much and get sick.  My example was peanut butter Rice Krispie treats, an invention that I assume was my mothers.  They were sooooo good.  But I have never eaten them since that day (over 30 years ago.  In fairness, no one has offered them to me either).

So this is a fun song–opening with snapped fingers and a solo female voice before the horn fueled simple melody comes in.  I enjoyed the way the “ba ba ba” section turned into baba ghanoush.

There’s a shout-out section about the foods that did you right and wrong.  My only quibble with the song is that the foods that they list are really strange–foods that no one thinks of as their favorite foods–zucchini??, creamed spinach??.  Even gummy bears?  Where’s the heavy foods that kids actually overeat?

Lunch Money has another song called “I Love My Library” that I may have to check out.  This one came on the Kids Corner 25th Anniversary CD.

[READ: October 25, 2013] Goofballs #3: Superhero Silliness

This book introduced me to a word that I evidently should have known for some time: derder.  A derder is the cardboard roll inside of toilet paper or paper towels.  You put your lips up to it and go “der der der” and it’s a musical instrument.  Seriously.

But what does that have to do with Superheroes?  Well, in this case, plenty.

The kids are on line at Pizza Palace, the site of their very first mystery (which we never saw).  Luigi, the owner, had named a pizza after them for their brave deeds–cheese, garlic, pineapple and peanut butter.  And now it was one year after that deed and he was adding a new mystery topping.  Everyone was waiting to see what it would be when a lino pulled up to the line and called the Goofballs over.  It is Randall Crandall’s driver and he says that Randall Crandall needs their help.

Randall has the world’s largest collection of derders and he is afraid that someone is planning to steal it.  He is having a superhero costume party and he fears that the thief will try to steal them during the party. Will the Goofballs come dressed in original superhero costumes and catch the thief?

Will they ever! (more…)

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TV Fall 2013

Posted in Archer, Ben and Kate, Bob's Burgers, Bunheads, Elementary, Face Off, How I Met Your Mother, Modern Family, New Girl, Parenthood, Parks and Recreation, Project Runway, Sleepy Hollow, The Big Bang Theory, The Simpsons, Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell, TV 2013, Workaholics on November 29, 2013| 2 Comments »

Fall 2013 brought in a whole slew of new shows that we wanted to check out.  And while we dropped some after an episode, we still have a few that are lingering on the DVR which we are never really all that excited to watch them.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is that a couple of shows that we thought were sure goners are still around.  And of course, there’s always those shows that we never watched and when we see an ad for it we say, “that’s still on?”

So last time, I did a tally of networks.  Let’s see who wins this time:
NBC: 4  FOX: 6   CBS: 3  Comedy Central: 1  FX: 1  ABC: 3  Lifetime: 1 SyFy: 1   (more…)

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David Foster Wallace–Both Flesh and Not: Essays (2012)

Posted in David Foster Wallace on November 28, 2013| Leave a Comment »

flesh

SOUNDTRACK: SIGUR RÓS-Von (1997).

von

This is Sigur Rós’ debut album. It is a far cry from the gorgeousness that their later albums would bring.  In fact it is primarily an excuse for washes of songs, trippy sound effects, otherworldly vocals and the occasional song.  You can hear elements of that later Sigur Rós, but for the most part this is some pretty simple space rock.

 “Sigur Rós” opens the album with spacey sounds and a distant hi hat.  It’s a series of swirling notes and waves of chords for 9 minutes.  Some vocals (okay screams) come in around 6 minutes making it a bit more scary than trippy.  It morphs into “Dögun”which is closer to the famed Sigur Rós sound–swirls of notes and ethereal voices.  At 3 minutes some really distant crazy voices start singing as most of the music drops away. “Hún Jörð …”   brings some beats (backwards) until the song proper starts.  There are two vocals singing high swooning sounds over a simple bass (two note) melody and drums.  It’s a very simple song but especially after 12 minutes of space music that preceded it, it really coalesces as a song.  And when the band crashes in and the drums start pounding (a great build up) the album really hits its stride.  It’s a pretty great precursor to their later great songs and the studio trickery at the end of the song (making it go backwards) is pretty fun too.

“Leit að lífi” is a 3 minute song of spacey noodling. maybe backwards guitar and theremin.  “Myrkur” reintroduces some bass guitar (this actually sounds like a riff from an 80s alt rock band). It may be their most conventional song.  “18 sekúndur fyrir sólarupprás” is 18 seconds of silence.  “Hafssól” is a trippy swirly song with waves of music and distant voices for over 12 minutes.  “Veröld ný og óð” is mostly percussion, which then morphs into people talking and laughing.

Title tack “Von” also begins with percussion, but in a more song oriented way.  The vocals also come in nicely in the mix letting you know that a proper song is coming–although it stays very spacey and fragile.  “Mistur” is only 2 minutes of percussion.  “Syndir Guðs (Opinberun frelsarans)”  has a simple bassline with trippy squeaky guitars and whispered vocals.  For 7 minutes.  It’s simple and repetitive but very enjoyable.  The final track “Rukrym”  is six minutes of silence and then “Myrkur” played backwards.

Never reaching the heights of their later albums, this does give a glimpse into what they might get up to.  However, it mostly feels like early trippy Pink Floyd.

[READ: November 27, 2013] Both Flesh and Not

Sarah got me this book for Christmas last year.  I had intended to read it but I realized that I had read all of the essays individually before, so it became a lower priority.  The only thing in the book that is “new” is the list of DFW’s definitions of words that he saved on his computer.  Before each essay there is an alphabetical list of words he found interesting with their definitions (and some annotations).  They help you appreciate the kinds of things he was interested in and the complexity of words.  It’s pretty cool.  I particularly liked: “muntin–strip of wood or metal that separates & holds various panes in a window, like a window w/four individual panes arranged in a big rectangle etc (that’s putting it well Dave).

But when I recently read Wittgenstein’s Mistress, I decided to reread his essay, so i looked in the book.  And it all spiraled from there–so much that I’m going to compare the book versions to the original articles next week.

And but so, this is a very enjoyable collection of essays. The essays are arranged chronologically from 1988-2007 (except for the first article which gives the book its title and is a great opener, but which I argue is the one that should be read after a different essay).  There’s a couple of essays on tennis, some book reviews, some essays about writing, and some thoughts on the (then) current political climate.  Nothing is too too academic (well, a couple are), and while many of the stories do come from DFW’s younger writing days when he was a little pedantic, his later ones are a lot of fun (and his love for tennis is palpable). (more…)

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George Saunders reads Isaac Babel’s “You Must Know Everything” (New Yorker fiction podcast (#4) “Listen and Learn” August 2007)

Posted in Ernest Hemingway, George Saunders, Interviews, Isaac Babel, Jack Kerouac, New Yorker, New Yorker Fiction Podcast, Podcast, Short Story on November 27, 2013| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: November 21, 2013] “You Must Know Everything” podcast

podcastIn the fourth New Yorker fiction podcast, George Saunders reads Isaac Babel.  I know Saunders very well, although I knew next to nothing about Isaac Babel.

Saunders sets up this story very briefly before diving in to the read.  There’s something fantastic about the way Saunders read the story–full of emotion and affect.  He absolutely made the story come to life and his commentary at the end made the story even better.

Babel was 21 when he wrote this story (he was amazingly prolific–his Complete Works is over 1,000 pages), and Saunders is blown away by the amount of depth such a young writer fits into the story.  Saunders says that for him Babel is a combination of Hemingway and Kerouac–Hemingway because Babel edited his storied very intensely and Kerouac because he wasn’t afraid to add the occasional poetic touch.

In the story, a young boy is going to visit his grandmother.  As the story opens, he explains that he was always very observant.  He knew everything about the streets of his city, Odessa.  He knew the stores and the anomalies in the buildings.  He observed every new window.  Until someone teased him for looking in a lingerie store. (more…)

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Donald Antrim reads Donald Barthelme’s “I Bought a Little City” (New Yorker fiction podcast (#3) “Urban Planning” July 2007)

Posted in Dogs, Donald Antrim, Donald Barthelme, Interviews, New Yorker, New Yorker Fiction Podcast, Podcast, Short Story on November 26, 2013| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: November 20, 2013] “Urban Planning” podcast

podcastIn the third New Yorker fiction podcast, Donald Antrim reads Donald Barthelme.  I know both writers, but neither one all that well.

The story is absurdist and very funny.  In it, the narrator buys “a little city,”Galveston, Texas.  He keeps things pretty much the way they are–he doesn’t want anything too imaginative going on.  He tears down several houses and builds new developments (cut in the shape of puzzle pieces).  But he’s a little bored so he goes out and shoots 6,000 dogs, and then makes a front page announcement that he had done it.  This causes some upset (naturally), and he’s appreciative for the excitement.

But overall he is unsatisfied because he is in love with a married woman.  And she won’t leave her husband (and may not even know who the narrator is–except that he owns the city).  Eventually he had to sell the city back (and he took a real soaking financially on that deal).

The story has many many funny lines–laugh out loud funny–and (dog killing aside) it is a funny and delightfully weird story that retains its voice no matter how odd it seems. (more…)

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Edwidge Danticat discusses Junot Díaz’s “How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie” (New Yorker fiction podcast (#2) “The Dating Game” June 2007)

Posted in Edwidge Danticat, Interviews, Junot Díaz, New Yorker, Podcast, Racism, Sex, Sexism, Short Story, Unreliable narrator on November 25, 2013| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: November 20, 2013] “The Dating Game” podcast

outkoudIn the second New Yorker fiction podcast, Edwidge Danticat doesn’t read Díaz’s story but rather she discusses it and her connection to Díaz after listening to the audio from the New Yorker Out Loud 2 CD (the story is read by Junot Díaz with Gail Thomas doing the female voices).

I have yet to read Díaz’s Drown (for no real reason, I just haven’t), which is where this story appears.  And I enjoyed that this story is written in the same style as his later stories about Junior (sure, I suppose he will need to move beyond Junior as a character but it seems like he has plenty of stories to tell).  And I found this story unsettling and very enjoyable.

The story is a funny/obnoxious (I mean, re-read the title) story about, as the title suggests, how to date a girl–there are different specifics depending on her race (white girls will put out, but local girls you need to take to the fancy restaurant).  And be sure to take the government cheese out of the fridge so she doesn’t see it–but be damn sure to put it back before your mom gets home.

The reading is wonderful and having Thomas do the female voices really adds a nice touch.  I would say more about the story, but Danticat says a lot of what I was thinking about it.  (more…)

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Richard Ford–“Reunion” (New Yorker, May 15, 2000)

Posted in Dr. Dog, Grateful Dead, John Cheever, Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, Reunion, Richard Ford, Sex, Short Story, Tiny Desk Concert on November 24, 2013| Leave a Comment »

2000_05_15_p323

SOUNDTRACK: DR. DOG-Tiny Desk Concert #7 (October 20, 2008).

drdog

I have been hearing a lot about Dr. Dog lately (they are from Philly and the radio station we listen to is from Philly, so that makes sense).  But I had assumed they were a new band.  So imagine my surprise to see that they were the 7th Tiny Desk Concert and the first full band to play the Tiny Desk.  (Their first album came out in 2005!).

It’s fun to watch a five piece band squeeze into the Tiny Desk (the drummer is playing a small pink suitcase) and the fifth member of the band is playing some various percussions (I wonder if he does more in the band).  It’s also funny when one of the guitars breaks a string and the singer says “son of a bitch.”

Dr. Dog proves to be quite interesting.  Their first song is “The Beach.”  It’s a rocking awesome track–the guitar is great and bassist Toby Leaman’s move is raspy and powerful.  I really like this song a lot.  The second song is quite different, it’s a bouncy boppy song that sounds a bit like a more rocking Grateful Dead (that bass).  This song has a different singer–Scott McMicken, who plays lead guitar on “The Beach,” but acoustic guitar here.  (The other guitarist, Frank McElroy  played acoustic on The Beach and electric on this one).

After a lengthy discussion they play the third song (in a different version from the record) “How Dare.”  This song opens with their great harmonies (a wonderful feature of the band).  It also has a jam band quality (Toby’s back on vocals but less raspy and powerful, and more bluesy)/on this track.

The band seemed to think they were only to play two songs, and frankly it’s a shame they only play 3. At 12 minutes it one of the shorter Tiny Desk concerts.  But I am a convert to Dr. Dog, and I need to hear more from them.

[READ: November 10, 2013] “Reunion”

After listening to Richard Ford in yesterday’s podcast, I decided I wanted to read his take on the Cheever story “Reunion.”  And while I can definitely see that it was inspired by a kernel of an idea in Cheever’s story, I probably never would have put the two together had I not known.

Ford’s story opens the same way as Cheever’s with someone waiting in Grand Central Station.  It turns out that the person is Mack Bolger.  Bolger is waiting intently for someone.  We quickly learn that the narrator who spies Bolger had had an affair with Bolger’s wife, Beth about a  year and a half prior to this meeting.  It ended abruptly when Mack confronted them in their hotel room (in St. Louis).  Mack (who is a large man) boxed the narrator’s ears a bit and sent him running from the room in varying stages of dress (and without a precious scarf which his mother had given him).

He had not seen Mack again, although he did see Beth on one final instance–a sort of final closure.  They met in a bar and tied up loose ends, and that was that.

So when the narrator sees Mack he gets this sudden urge to speak to him:

just as you might speak to anyone you casually knew and had unexpectedly but not unhappily encountered. And not to impart anything, or to set in motion any particular action (to clarify history, for instance, or make amends), but just to speak and create an event where before there was none.  (more…)

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Richard Ford reads John Cheever’s “Reunion” (New Yorker fiction podcast (#1) “Reunions” December 2006)

Posted in Drinking, Interviews, John Cheever, New Yorker, Podcast, Richard Ford, Short Story on November 23, 2013| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: November 19, 2013] “Reunions” podcast

podcastIn the very first New Yorker fiction podcast, Richard Ford reads a story by John Cheever from 1962.  This is an especially apt pairing because Ford explains that when he does author appearances, he often reads Cheever’s story “Reunion” before reading his own story “Reunion.”  The reason, he explains, is that the Cheever story inspired his own.  [I haven’t read the Ford story although it too appears in the New Yorker, but from the way he describes it, it doesn’t sound like it’s all that similar, just “inspired” by the Cheever piece].

I don’t know a lot of Cheever (which Ford says is a common and sad problem for American readers), but I have always loved his story “The Swimmer,” which I think is fantastic.

“Reunion” (the Cheever story) is very simple and yet it speaks a lot about family. (Both Ford and the New Yorker host talk about how remarkably short (about 1,000 words) and yet how powerfully concise it is.)  In the story, a young man has time to kill between trains in Gran Central Station.  He is en route from school and had about 90 minutes before his next train arrives. So he contacts his father to see about having lunch.  He hasn’t seen his father in about three years and he thinks this will be nice. (more…)

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Tom Bissell–“Improvised, Explosive, & Divisive: Searching in vain for a strategy in Iraq” (Harper’s, January 2006)

Posted in Bob Dylan, Bombs, Culture Shock, Don Williams, Essays, Harper's, Kurt Wagner, Lambchop, Military, Tiny Desk Concert, Tom Bissell, Translators, Video Games, Violence, War on November 22, 2013| 1 Comment »

jan2006 SOUNDTRACK: KURT WAGNER-Tiny Desk Concert #6 (October 8, 2008).

kurtI have never been a big fan of Lambchop.  It’s just not my kind of music—a little too slow for me.  But I really enjoyed Kurt Wagner in this Tiny Desk performance.  His guitar playing I really beautiful (I loved how he hit the high note on Bob Dylan’s  “You’re a Big Girl Now.”  He plays three Lambchop songs and two covers.

Wagner is from Nashville, and he has an air of Southern propriety about him–apologizing for taking up everyone’s time at work.  He sounds great doing the Dylan song, which I suppose is no real surprise.  The first Lambchop song is a pretty ballad called “Slipped Dissolved and Loosed.”

He is a charming and funny guy, joking about a few things (like working in an office) and then discussing about one of his songs, “National Talk Like a Pirate Day” (which is not as funny as the title might suggest).  Another song is titled “Sharing a Gibson with Martin Luther King Jr.” (and Wagner waves a fan of MLK Jr. (from a funeral home-(?)) to start the song.

The final song is a Don Williams song called “I Believe in You.”  I’ve never heard of him (and neither had anyone else in the studio).  It’s a really enjoyable, sweet song, and there’s a funny moment when sirens go past and he comments that at least they are in tune.  I still don’t think I’ll be listening to a lot of Lambchop, but I really liked this Tiny Desk show.

[READ: October 8, 2013] “Improvised, Explosive, & Divisive”

Two years after writing about his trip to Vietnam, Bissell returned to another war zone.  This time going to Iraq to get embedded (I suppose that’s the technical term for what he did) with some Marines at Camp Taqaddum in Iraq (17 miles from Baghdad).  This was during the Iraq war (and the Bush presidency), after Mission Accomplished, when the military was searching for a strategy for what to do in the situation.

This article shows interviews with Marines and makes assessments about our then current plans (such as they were) for how to extricate ourselves from a seemingly hopeless situation.  After Mission Accomplished the war went from a “war” to “stability and support operations against an insurgent element” or what is called MOOTW (military operations other than war).  And Bissell acknowledges that it barely seems like any resembling war in Iraq where the soldiers are headquartered.  They cannot drink alcohol, have sex or view pornography (they are trying to remain respectful of their host country), but at the same time they play softball and go to the gym, wear Co-Ed Naked Camel Watching T-shirts and have a Baskin-Robbins ice cream stand.  Not to mention DVD, video game consoles and Coke for sale in the PX.

Some of the article is technical—a side of the fighting that most readers probably don’t know. Like that the troops must be fully protected (and the vehicles as well) just to travel the relatively short distance between camps. (more…)

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David Foster Wallace–“The Empty Plenum: David Markson’s ‘Wittgenstein’s Mistress'” (Review of Contemporary Fiction 1990)

Posted in Beth Orton, Bjork, Book Reviews, David Foster Wallace, David Markson, Essays, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Review of Contemporary Fiction, Smarty Pants, Thao Nguyen, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Thomas Pynchon, Tiny Desk Concert, William Gaddis, Wittgenstein's Halloween on November 21, 2013| 1 Comment »

contficSOUNDTRACK: THAO NGUYEN-Tiny Desk Concert #5 (September 4, 2008).

thaoI had never heard of Thao Ngyuen (who admits that her last name is a phonetic disaster–it’s pronounced When) before this concert and man is she a lot of fun.

  She plays a great acoustic guitar—very percussive on the strings (and even some percussive noises from her mouth before the first song starts).  Her voice is a strange mix of a few singers, reminding me a bit of Björk (but with a kind of Southern sounding accent) and maybe Beth Orton, if Beth was a bit more excited.   Thao plays her guitar very loosely—a kind of sloppiness that is really fun—but not in a “she can’t really play” way.  It’s an I’m having a lot of fun style.

NPR dude Mike Katzif heard her band Get Down Stay Down opening for another band.  And he loved her off-kilter melodies (which are ample).  “Bag of Hammers” is played on the high strings and it has an almost Caribbean feel—boppy and fun and totally made for dancing. Her guitar playing is very fast strumming, especially on “Beat (Health, Life and Fire),” I love watching the chords she is playing up and down the neck of the guitar.

I really enjoyed the conceit of “Big Kid Table” and the Hawaiian vibe she gets from her guitar.  “Feet Asleep” brings out a bit more of a country vibe from her singing (she is from Virginia).  I love the diversity of her music and I’m looking forward to checking out both her band and her solo work. In addition to being a great singer and songwriter, she is also quite funny—the story about her grandma and her calves is very funny indeed.

This continues the greatness of the Tiny Desk concerts.

[READ: November 14, 2013]  “The Empty Plenum”

The reason I got involved with Wittgenstein’s Halloween was because David Foster Wallace had said Wittgenstein’s Mistress was one of the best books of the 1990s.

The whole list is on Salon, but here’s the quote about WM:

“Wittgenstein’s Mistress” by David Markson (1988)
“W’s M” is a dramatic rendering of what it would be like to live in the sort of universe described by logical atomism. A monologue, formally very odd, mostly one-sentence ¶s. Tied with “Omensetter’s Luck” for the all-time best U.S. book about human loneliness. These wouldnt constitute ringing endorsements if they didnt happen all to be simultaneously true — i.e., that a novel this abstract and erudite and avant-garde that could also be so moving makes “Wittgenstein’s Mistress” pretty much the high point of experimental fiction in this country.

I had also read his review of the book before [I copy everything I said then below].  I admit I didn’t get that much out of it before because it was mostly about Wittgenstein and a book I hadn’t read.  Well, now that I’ve read the Markson book, it seemed like a good time to revisit the review.

Two things strike me immediately–this was written after Wallace had written Broom of the System and some other fiction and yet he speaks of himself as a “would-be writer,” not a writer.  And two, this review really belongs in a philosophy journal rather than a literary journal–DFW was making the jump from philosophy to literature, but his knowledge of philosophy is very strong, so he is focusing on that aspect of the story. (more…)

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