I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: MAC DEMARCO-“No Other Heart” (Field Recordings, August 10, 2015).

Mac Demarco is pretty famous now and seems to be pretty much everywhere.  And yet I actually don;t think I’d ever heard him before this recording.

I’m not even sure if it is in any way representative of his music.  But I love that you can hear the waves lapping.

For this song, Demarco says he bought a boat for his birthday.  It’s a small rowboat, which he rowed out into a bay in Queens “Take A Sunset Cruise With Mac DeMarco”) and began playing his song on a little keyboard. The music has an intentional weird vibrato on it but the recording sound is quite magnificent.

For the charismatic 26-year-old songwriter who grew up in the landlocked plains of Canada, the water still holds an exotic appeal. Plus, the area’s laid-back feel is a perfect match for his laconic delivery and perpetually chill personality.

He sounds a little goofy singing it–presumably intentionally–given the other clips of him goofing off on his boat.

DeMarco moved to this house [by the bay in Far Rockaway, Queens] last fall, after touring behind last year’s excellent Salad Days — just in time for the long, bleak East Coast winter — with the intention of playing his instruments loud and writing new music in isolation [the wistful, melodic mini-album Another One].  A shaggy and surfy collection of love songs, it’s suited for a lazy summer backyard barbecue or taking your second-hand rowboat out for a dusk cruise.

As the show ends, he goofs around singing “Don’t Rock the Boat” as the camerawoman walks up to him in waist deep water.

Behind him, sun-dappled waves are chopped up by freighter boats and the occasional jet ski passing by. Across the water sits JFK airport, with its distant engine hum of planes taking off and landing at a steady, rhythmic clip. The crisp, salty sea breeze mingles with wafts of stagnant water, decaying debris and dead horseshoe crabs that wash ashore.

[READ: June 2, 2018] Cleopatra in Space Book Four

T. brought this book home and I couldn’t believe that book four was out already (had it really been a year?).

This book opens with a reflection on the previous book and Octavian yelling at his soldier cat for not killing the girl.  He is provided with a bounty hunter–a dog-headed man who will stop at nothing to make sure that the Golden Lion is destroyed.

Octavian is shocked.   If they possessed the Golden Lion, they could firmly defeat P.Y.R.A.M.I.D.

Back at P.Y.R.A.M.I.D. at Yasiro Academy, we see Cleo doing battle against a whole bunch of robots in a simulator  Akira comes to take her to class but before they can go they are summoned before he Council.  When they arrive in front of the cat Council, Akira’s parents are there (they call her KiKi much to her annoyance).  They are happy to see her and very happy to meet Cleopatra for they have been studying her life and the prophecy for years.

Cleo immediately apologizes for something but the cats stop her and tell her and KiKi that the Golden Lion has been found. Cleo says she has heard of it somewhere (It is written all over the school in a motto:  “A hero will arrive from Earth…on  the eve of the golden lion.”  It’s part of the prophecy

Cleo is excited to go look for it but she has been grounded.  Not to mention there is snow on the planet where the golden lion has been located. And Cleo has never dealt with snow before.

Despite the grounding, one of the cats gives her an object which her techie friend Brian reveals to be  a device that lets you travel through space four times faster than usual.  Brain has a huge crush on Cleo and wants her to be safe, so he outfits her with a space suit and new weapon (that owes more than a debt to star wars light sabers).

She lands on the snow planet and is instantly attacked by a giant space bug (which is just a baby). She is saved by Antony.  She is annoyed and thankful at the same time (although she’d never say thank you to him). He is looking for the golden lion too.

But he says he’s sure there’s enough golden lion to go around,

Cleo hates the cold and the snow.  They get into a fight with the bounty hunter and wind up in a cave hiding out.  An adorable snow otter comes into the cave and Cleo follows it to a tropical realm.

Amusingly, everyone in this new realm speaks in algebraic equations.  Cleo is miffed by this but Antony finds their comments hilarious (I also love that he doesn’t explain what’s funny).

The land is a tropical paradise and the people there are very nice and welcoming even if Cleo cant speak algebra.

And then the Xerx show up and a huge battle ensues.  Maihack loves to draw battles scenes. As usual I don’t love the battle scenes.  Maihack does a good job drawing them and showing who is who, but I find that it’s just a whole bunch of sound effects and bright lines.   So I tend to not get that involved in the battles.  Which is how I missed that Cleo was stabbed through the stomach.

Things look bleak.  Cleo has been stabbed, Antony is on a piece of island in the middle of a lava field.

How will or heroine survive?

The ending is a good one, with lessons learned and common sense prevailing.

But the very last few panels are quite a shock.  We see Antony handing over something to Octavian.  Just whose side is he on?

Book 5 should be pretty exciting.