SOUNDTRACK: THE FLAMING LIPS-“My Religion is You” (2020).
This is another new single from The Flaming Lips’ new, more mellow album American Head.
This song starts as a piano ballad about various religions.
It’s not the most profound song but it’s chill
Yeah, Buddha’s cool
And you’re no fool
To believe anything
You need to believe in
If Hare Krishna
Maybe it’s the
Thing for you
Hey, that’s cool
The chorus kicks in with big fat synth notes that almost feel sinister, but really aren’t. Wayne explains that he doesn’t need religions, because his religion “is you.”
I don’t need no religion
You’re all I need
You’re the thing I believe in
Nothing else is true
My religion is you
There’s a pretty guitar solo and the end of the song is an interesting mix of scattered drums and quite synth noises. It’s not their best song for sure, but it grows on you.
[READ: June 2020] That’s Not How You Wash a Squirrel
David Thorne is an Australian smart ass. This is his fifth collection of previously unreleased emails and essays.
The foreword of this book is written by Holly Thorne, David’s wife. And it is hilarious. The Foreforeword is him arguing with her about whether she will write the Foreword–but only if she doesn’t say something mean about him.
So she writes things like
Davis does have a stressful job but let’s be honest, he’s not clearing landmines. Even on my worst days I’m not half the diva David is.
After writing some more hilarious paragraphs, you see in a different font:
David is very brave, I once saw him flick a snake off the patio furniture with a stick.
In the Postforeword, he complains about her foreword. That he comes off like a fuckwit and that there is no mention of the snake.
This book has a number of much longer essays. The first one, “The Ride of the Valkyries” is all about David visiting his father. He brought along his son Seb and they discovered that in the old man’s new house, there was a trap door that led to a trap door in an abandoned roller skating rink. It’s surprisingly tender and a remarkably fascinating discovery.
“Squirrel” is about the titular animal–it’s fascinating the way the title comes about. David explains that there are no squirrels in Australia. (“Americans are vaguely surprised by this.” Yes, I am). So when he moved to America he was rather taken with them.
His neighbor Carl is an old grouchy man who hates squirrels (and sits in his porch with a .22 trying to shoot them). David hopes he’ll be dead soon.
David rescued a baby squirrel which he called Squirrel. He took care of it and nursed it to health. He even bought a bathtub for it ($85) and prepared to bathe it. After making fun of him for spending so much, Holly asked if she could bathe it. That’s how the title enters the picture. Then, over the course Squirrel’s time with them, David winds up building a massive run that goes in and out of their house and has multiple rooms, including a pool.
This essay also talks about what a hothead David’s father is.
A typical punishment was being banned from watching TV for the night. Except that instead of going to a different room, you had to sit next to the TV in a chair facing everyone else watching the TV. This could be a punishment from complaining about how lumpy the Gravox is.
He explains that Gravox is “a waterproof brown gravy-flavored powder to which you add water and stir. When you poke at the resulting lumps, they burst and produce clouds of dust like the slow-motion videos you see of mushrooms shooting spores.”
He also includes a 5 question test to determine if you are a sociopath.
Which may be useful for the section called “Tomotes.” It is a series of emails between his neighbors in the Forest Hill subdivision.
Carl (the old man who hates squirrels) writes that someone has trespassed on his property and ripped up tomato vines. Carl has his suspicions of who it is. Obviously David is there to offer helpful suggestions. Like maybe it was a bear or maybe it was Janice–“she looks shifty.” Janice is on the email thread, by the way.
The way it spirals out of control is hilarious.
The essay “Encarta 95” shows all of the emails that Holly’s parents sent them the day David installed Encarta 95 on their computer.
Some choice ones: “Tom changed the password to round dots.” “Every time Tom clicks something in Google, do we get charged twenty-five cents?” and “How do you delete the internet? We just want the photos of the cat.”
“Tennis Ball” is about a game that a friend of his invented when they were 12. It’s tennis that you play by dipping the tennis ball in petrol and lighting it on fire. When Dennis tries to name the game Fireball Tennis, the friend gets mad because it was his idea so he should name it. He comes up with a few bad names and ultimately ends up with… “Tennis Ball.”
“Cloud Backgrounds” is a work discussion. Walter is mad that Jodie makes more than he does, even though Jodie has worked there longer. So David offers to make a presentation as to why Walter deserves more money that Jodie. The (absurd) chart goes from simple to over the top to hilarious with cloud backgrounds.
“Things” is about all of the things that Holly does that bug him. She says she doesn’t have any of those things. But he can list several just by writing down everything she says to the TV while watching Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, The Great Race and even commercials.
“The Meadows” is about a trip they take to a “friend’s” house for a BBQ. David argues that The Meadows is a deceptive name for the complex where they live because it is actually “full of trucks, Confederate flags and child molestation.” David meets a man named TNT who had one tooth, no shirt and two crossed sticks of dynamite tattooed on his chest. David asked him what he did and he replied “eat pussy.”
There’ also a lot about his good fried JM. “Deer Hunt” is about David’s first time going hunting with JM. He had never held a gun before. They started by going skeet shooting. After hitting one, David realized it was the greatest sport ever invented (I felt the same way actually). So he immediately went out and bought a shotgun. As well as a cleaning kit, a shooting, vest, glasses, earplugs, a carry bag….
When the range closed for winter, he thought he was done, until JM invited him hunting. David’s experience hunting–freezing cold and hating every second of it–is laugh out loud hilarious.
“Horsepower” is a hilarious essay about David buying a way-too-big-for-their needs Jeep and how quickly Holly is converted to loving it more than he does.
There are also a number of much shorter items–one to three pages long. Those are all very funny–punchy and sharp. Also funny is the About the Author which is, in fact, a biography of Uri Geller with David’s name put in instead.
I’ve already gone out and bought his first book which I can’t wait to read.
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