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Archive for the ‘Kurt Vonnegut’ Category

Kurt Vonnegut–The Last Interview and Other Conversations (2011)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Biography, Book Reviews, Books about writers, David Foster Wallace, Free Speech, Funny (ha ha), George Orwell, George Plimpton, History, In These Times, Interviews, Jacques Derrida, Jill Krementz, Joe Perro, Jorge Luis Borges, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, Marriage (Happy), Martin Amis, Morrissey, Norman Mailer, Playboy, Politicians, Ralph Ellison, Religion, Roberto Bolaño, Short Books, Sports, Stop Smiling, Surfer Blood, The Nation, The Paris Review, U.S. Airways Magazine, Violence, War on March 28, 2013| 1 Comment »

vonlastintSOUNDTRACK: SURFER BLOOD-“Demon Dance” (Live at SXSW, March 27, 2013).

surfer blood

I’ve liked Surfer Blood since I first heard them.  They write catchy, mostly short, poppy songs.  And usually after a few listens, the hooks really grab you.  The strange thing about the band is that the hooks aren’t always readily apparent, which makes their songs sound kind of samey sometimes.

Of course, samey isn’t a bad thing, necessarily.  Surfer Blood is quite distinctive and I tend to enjoy everything they do.  This new song sounds like their other stuff, which is fine.  But the most distinctive thing about the band of probably their singer who sounds like a less-affected Morrissey.

Having also listened to the song from the album I can say that the singer is far harder to understand live, so maybe live is not the best way to hear a new song from them, but for an old favorite, Surfer Blood has a great energy live.

Watch the show here and hear the studio version here.

[READ: March 27, 2013] The Last Interview and Other Conversations

Melville House has published a number of these “Last Interview” books, and as a completist I feel compelled to read them.  I have read criticisms of the series primarily because what the books are are collections of interviews including the last interview that the writer gave.  They don’t have anything new or proprietary.  The last interview just happens to be the last one he gave.   So it seems a little disingenuous, but is not technically wrong.

There’s so far five books in the series, and I figured I’d read at least three (Vonnegut, David Foster Wallace and Roberto Bolaño–the other two turned out to be Jorge Luis Borges–who I would be interested in reading about and Jacques Derrida (!) who I have always loved–I guess this series was tailor made for me).

At any rate, these interviews are from various times and locations in Vonnegut’s career.  There are six in total.  I don’t know if the titles they give here were the titles in the original publications but here’s what’s inside:

  • “Kurt Vonnegut: The Art of Fiction” from The Paris Review, Spring 1977 (by David Hayman, David Michaelis, George Plimpton, Richard Rhodes)
  • “There Must be More to Love Than Death” from The Nation, August 1980 (by Robert K. Musil)
  • “The Joe & Kurt Show” from Playboy, May 1982 (by Joseph Heller and Carole Mallory)
  • “The Melancholia of Everything Completed” from Stop Smiling, August 2006 (by J.C. Gabel)
  • “God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut” from U.S. Airways Magazine (!!!), June 2007 (by J. Rentilly)
  • “The Last Interview” from In These Times May 9, 2007 (by Heather Augustyn) (more…)

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Kurt Vonnegut & Lee Stringer–Like Shaking Hands with God (1999)

Posted in Alanis Morissette, All Songs Considered, Books about writers, Free Speech, Funny (ha ha), Haim, Heart, Kurt Vonnegut, Lee Stringer, Mark Twain, Short Books on March 26, 2013| Leave a Comment »

stringer SOUNDTRACK: HAIM-“Falling” (Live at SXSW, March 17, 2013).

haim

Haim are three sisters and a drummer.  The sisters play guitar and sing, play bass and percussion and play keyboards.  And yes, they look a lot alike (an a lot like Alanis Morrissette).  But they sound very classic rock–kind of like Heart, with a more modern, noisy twist.

I didn’t really care much for the sound of this song–it seems kind of anemic to me.  The sisters are all quite talented and when the lead singer/guitarist started wailing they were really good.  But the overall feel of the song seemed more high school than rock show–like they couldn’t get the mix right, like the keyboards (which were little bopping notes, rather than waves of music) were the main force behind the song–which I don’t think is true.

Maybe they’d sound better on record, or if they had a better mix on stage.

[READ: March 26, 2013] Like Shaking Hands with God

I had been reading a lot of Vonnegut, but I got a little burnt out by him.  However, when I was checking his bibliography all those months ago, I found that Princeton University had a book that I couldn’t find anywhere else.  Well, given my new employment situation, it was time to take advantage of that connection.  So I went to the Firestone library and grabbed this book (and a few others that I didn’t see elsewhere).

It’s a lot of fuss over an 80 page book, but I’m glad I read it and it did get me back in the mood to read more Vonnegut (I have five books of his left to read, although I believe more posthumous stuff seems to come out all the time).

This book is essentially a transcription of two conversations that Vonnegut had (one public and one private) with the author Lee Stringer and the moderator Ross Klavan.  The first conversation occurred on October 1, 1998 at a bookstore in Manhattan.  The second was a private affair in January 1999  (which was of course, recorded), in which they followed up on some of the same ideas.

Stringer had written one book (Grand Central Winter) when the first conversation took place (he has written two more since).  Stringer says he always admired Vonnegut and Vonnegut talks about how much he liked Grand Central Winter (which Vonnegut wrote a forward to).  GCW is nothing like Vonnegut’s books, it is a serious book about being homeless (Stringer himself was homeless for a long time) and it is real and gritty.  It sounds good, although maybe a little too gritty and real for me. (more…)

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Kurt Vonnegut–“Chore List of Champions” (Harper’s September 2012)

Posted in Canadian Music, Destroyer, Funny (ha ha), Harper's, KEXP 90.3 FM--Seattle, WA, Kurt Vonnegut, Letters, Marriage (Happy) on November 17, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: DESTROYER-Live on KEXP, March 19, 2011 (2011).

I enjoyed Destroyer’s Rubies album quite a bit.  And when Kaputt came out it was heralded as a masterpiece.  But I have to admit it’s a little two smooth jazz for my tastes.  The DJ in this interview describes it as being like George Michael (well, really, Wham), but George Michael knew howto write pop hits which made the smoothness more palatable.  This is kind of like extended jams of smooth jazz, which is…disconcerting.

They play two songs from Kaputt, “Downtown,” and “Song for America.” “Downtown” has a ton of cheesey sounding sax (and instrument I am growing to dislike more and more).  “Song for America” eschews much of the sax and is catchy with its pulsing bass line.  They also play “Certain Things You Ought to Know,” from Your Blues, an album I don’t know very well.  The song is kind of slow, but it tones down the cheese somewhat.  And “Painter in Your Pocket” from Rubies, a song I like very much gets a new treatment here.  It’s much more sparse, and I think I like it a little less.  Maybe Destroyer should just remain one album for me.

You can hear it here.

[READ: November 15, 2012] “Chore List of Champions”

Even though I said I was going to put off Vonnegut for a little while (there was certainly some burn out by the end), this letter appeared in Harper’s (and is in his newly released book Letters).

As the intro explains, this is a contract that Vonnegut signed with his then pregnant wife Jane, in 1947.

I think of marriage contracts these days as being crazily offensive and mercenary, as being things that would embarrass right-thinking people.  And geez, in 1947, what could he possibly have been asking.

Well, Vonnegut proves that he was a cool dude all along.  And all of the points in the contract are things that he pledges that will do, couched in his own hilarious manner.

Some examples: (more…)

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Douglas Coupland–Girlfriend in a Coma (1998)

Posted in Babies, Canadian Content, Cancer as plot device, Douglas Coupland, Dreams, Drinking, Drugs, End of the World, Hospitals, Kurt Vonnegut, Sex, Supernatural, The Smiths, Violence, Virginity (Loss of), Yuck! on October 15, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE SMITHS-“Girlfriend in a Coma” (1987).

Big bouncy basslines open this poppy little ditty that belies its happy music by saying “I know it’s serious.”  The song is catchy and poppy and then there are some strings and martial drums and in 2 minutes it’s over.  What a strange and wonderful single from the Smith’s final album.

The single came with two B-Sides.  “Work is a Four Letter Word” which I never realized was a cover until reading about it now.  Of course it does seem very un-Smiths upon reflection.  And apparently Johnny Marr hated it.  “I Keep Mine Hidden” is the second B-Side.  I thought I had heard every Smiths song, but I don’t recognize this one at all.  It’s an okay song, not exactly a great hidden gem or anything.  If it were on the album, you;d say it should have been a B-side.  So, well done, lads.

The craziest thing about this whole single–three songs–is that it is under 7 minutes long in total.    Ah, I remember the 80s.

[READ: October 14, 2012] Girlfriend in a Coma

I’m glad I watched the short film Close Personal Friend just before reading  this because it really did put forth a lot of the ideas in this story.  The crazy thing is that I read  this book in 1998 but I didn’t remember very much of the story until the very end (which is surprising given how over the top some of the scenes are!).

And, let’s not overlook the Smiths connection.  Not only is the title a Smiths song, but there are dozens of instances where Coupland includes Smiths song titles and lyrics, sometimes in conversation.  In a short succession I saw: the queen is dead, oscillate wildly, bigmouth strikes again, hand in glove.  It’s like a scavenger hunt.

But on to the book. (more…)

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Douglas Coupland: Close Personal Friend (1996)

Posted in Canadian Content, Consumerism, Corporate skewering, Douglas Coupland, Kurt Vonnegut, Meta, Reality Bites, Technology, The Future, Twin Peaks on October 12, 2012| 1 Comment »

[WATCHED: October 10, 2012] Close Personal Friend

While I was browsing Coupland’s bibliography on Wikipedia I saw this movie: Douglas Coupland: Close Personal Friend.  There is no information on Coupland’s site about it and there is precious little information about it anywhere else, frankly.  However, it has been uploaded to YouTube!

It’s a 24 minute film made for commercial TV.  It was made in 1996 and is very much of that time.  I’m not sure if Coupland was working on Girlfriend in a Coma at the time, but ideas in the film inform that book as well.

Basically it has Coupland, looking very clean-cut and smart–suit, skinny tie, hair parted hard–sitting in a white chair (a rounded chair that swivels–very “futuristic” looking).  He is sitting in front of  a white  background so his chair disappears from time to time (I’m willing to accept that that could just be the effect of a poor video transfer though).

There is an interviewer who asks him puffball questions, because it’s basically a chance for Coupland to talk about the his views of the late nineties and the future.  For instance: Do you consider yourself a citizen of the late 20th century?  (That’s just a weird question).  She asks him what the two dominant activities will be 20 years from now (which would be 2016).  His answer? Going shopping and going to jail.   Not too far off.

Coupland has always been concerned with the future (or more specifically, the millennium–I’m not sure how he has wrapped his head around the 21st century).  As I mentioned about his short story yesterday, he is very like-minded with Vonnegut about the state of humanity as we reach the millennium.   So he talks about lot of different topics including: individuality (and how we have lost it–he talks about a flock of birds seeing a group of people and finding them indistinguishable); the idea of not having a life–this was interesting, because as he points out even 20 years ago (1976), that expression would have been meaningless; consumerism; the uselessness of pop culture (how reading about Burt and Loni uses brain cells that could have been used to cure cancer).  And how technology can dehumanize us. (more…)

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Kurt Vonnegut–Timequake (1997)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Biography, Culture Shock, Death, Funny (ha ha), Futility, KEXP 90.3 FM--Seattle, WA, Kurt Vonnegut, Marriage Trouble, Morality, Nada Surf, Short Books, Utopia, Violence on October 10, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: NADA SURF-Live at KEXP January 30, 2008 (2008).

Nada Surf is criminally underrated and shamefully treated as a one-hit wonder for a song that sounds nothing like the rest of their work.

This four song set at KEXP features four acoustic renditions of songs from their wonderful  album Lucky.  The songs are stripped down, but the harmonies are all there.  The only song that really suffers in this format is “See These Bones,” which is a little less spirited than the recorded version (although the harmonies stand out even better).

They are also funny guys and very personable, as the interview shows.  This set is definitely worth downloading.  You can get it here.

[READ: October 6, 2012] Timequake

Timequake is Kurt Vonnegut’s last novel.  It is very much unlike any of his other novels because it is actually more of a fictional memoir than a novel.

There are two main characters in the book–Vonnegut himself and Kilgore Trout.  Vonnegut talks about his life a lot–and if you know anything about Vonnegut’s life, you know that the details in the novel are accurate.  At the same time, he talks about Trout’s life, specifically the end of his life and how he went from being a destitute bum to a celebrated and oft-quoted author.

And then there’s the matter of the timequake.  In 2001, there was the first timequake.  The world stopped expanding and moving forward and instead flashed back to 1991, where everyone picked up exactly where they were on that date in 1991, and relived every detail of their lives in exactly the same way.  Only this time they knew what was going to happen.  So every person lived on autopilot through every day for the next ten years–all the good and all the band (like the man who spent several years in prison and had to relive those years all over again).  Even the dead were resurrected and relived their days.

It’s an interesting concept and yet in the end it’s really not that interesting of a topic.  In the Prologue, Vonnegut says that he had originally written Timequake (which version he calls Timequake One) with that very premise, and that Vonnegut himself made a cameo. And yet I can see that it wouldn’t really have worked as a very good novel–unless he made up ideas for what happened to everyone and we the readers lived them for the first time– or something.

But so he bailed on that novel, but he certainly left parts of it intact for this one.  And rather than a cameo, Vonnegut features largely in this one. (more…)

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Kurt Vonnegut–Hocus Pocus (1990)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Anarchy, Culture Shock, Death, Funny (ha ha), Futility, Kurt Vonnegut, LGBTQ, Marriage Trouble, Morality, Nirvana, Portishead, Prison, Public Enemy, The White Stripes, Utopia, Violence on October 8, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:  PUBLIC ENEMY-Live at All Tomorrow’s Parties, Convention Hall, October 2, 2011 (2011).

NPR was cool enough to record and provide as a download most of the shows at the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in Asbury Park, NJ.  (Portishead wouldn’t allow their show to be recorded, sadly).  But Public Enemy was a welcome surprise!
This tour is in celebration of the anniversary of Fear of a Black Planet.  And they play most of Fear and a lot of other things too (with almost nothing from their 2000 era CDs.

I can remember back in the early days of rap that it was hard to imagine what a rap show would be like live since they didn’t play instruments and much of the music was sampled.  Well, PE has musicians on stage and they have DJ Lord filling in for Terminator X behind the turntables (big shoes to fill, but done largely well–especially his fun “solo” in which he samples The White Stripes and Nirvana–although he should have mixed in Portishead, no?).  And mostly they have the personalities of Chuck D and Flavor Flav.

I suspect that this show would be a bit more fun to watch than it is to listen to–Flavor Flav’s antics don’t always translate well without his visuals.    Like when he asks the audience if that can all say “Ho” (which he eventually holds for 33 seconds!), it seems like a delay tactic in audio, but is probably fun to witness.

What’s especially cool about the show is that PE play so many songs, including small snippets of songs as segues to other ones (like the seventy second version of “Anti-Nigger Machine” that intros “Burn Hollywood Burn” which is practically hardcore) or the minute and a half of “He Got Game” that follows “Night of the Living Baseheads.”  I like that they even threw in some skits from the record like “Meet the G That Killed Me” and “Incident at 66.6FM.”

But of course the real joy is the full length songs, “Brothers Gonna Work It Out,” “911 is a Joke,” and of course “Bring the Noise” and “Fight the Power.”

Some of the improv sections don’t work all that well, the guitar solo in “Power to the People” leaves something to be desired (Khari Wynn maybe a legend, but he;s no Vernon Reid),  although the  “Jungle Boogie” riff is cool.   But the improv with guest drummer Denis Davis was pretty bad ass.  Flavor Flav hopped on the drums and was quite good for “Timebomb.”  We also got to meet Flav’s daughter Jasmine.  And Professor Griff was there too.

It’s also interesting that they keep saying they have no time left in the set (Portishead is next) but they play for at least 30 minutes after this.  Including a wonderful “By the Time I Get to Arizona and the set ending “Fight the Power.”

Chuck D has still got it and Flav is just as crazy and fun as ever (even if his screams and yos seems out of tune from time to time).  Of course, Flav has to get the last word in by raging  on for six and a half minutes  at the end (and about six-minutes in the beginning as well where he gave himself props about his reality show.

It’s a really good set–a little distorted from time to time, but really solid.  Here’s a link to the downloadable show.

[READ: October 2, 2012] Hocus Pocus

This book may have put me over the edge in terms of Vonnegut exhaustion.  I bought this book some time in 1992, but I never read it. It’s been in my house for twenty years and it was about time I read it.

But as I’ve been noticing, each Vonnegut book has been getting darker and more misanthropic.  And this one is no exception.  The construction of the book follows Vonnegut’s cut and paste style but it feels even more shuffled and indirect than usual (more on that later).  In many of Vonnegut’s books, the “climax” occurs somewhere in the middle and he fills in the details later.  For this one, the climax came around h.and I wouldn’t have felt like I missed anything.

In this book, the main character, Eugene Debs Hartke  is a Vietnam vet (usually his protagonists are military men, and Vonnegut has criticized Vietnam a lot, but this is the first time he’s had a Vietnam vet as protagonist).  He married his wife and had a wonderful family until he learned that his mother in law had a disease that made her crazy–but it only kicked in later in life, after he married her daughter.  And that his wife has the same disease–so by the middle of the story both of the women in his life are crazy “hags.”  And, like in his other stories, his children hate him. (more…)

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Kurt Vonnegut–Bluebeard, the Autobiography of Rabo Karabekian (1916–1988) (1987)

Posted in Adventure, All Songs Considered, Art, Big Black, Charles Perrault, Consumerism, Corporate skewering, Culture Shock, Death, Funny (ha ha), Futility, Jackson Pollack, Japandroids, Kurt Vonnegut, Marriage Trouble, Morality, Violence on September 27, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: JAPANDROIDS-Live on KEXP, June 16, 2009 (2009).

Back in 2009,  one of the guys from Japandroids had surgery and they had to cancel some dates.  That’s only relevant to this because when this set is over, the guitarist is bleeding from his scar.

Japandroids are two guys and they make a lot of noise.  I can recall jamming on guitar with my friend on drums and even when we were totally in synch, we never sounded this good.  It really sounds like there are four or five people playing.  This set has three songs from their debut album and an amazing cover of Big Black’s “Racer X.”

The three  songs are very good and the guys pay hard and fast and, as I said, they sound amazing.  It’s a great set.  You can hear the whole thing here.  There’s also video of the performance.  It’s broken  into two parts.  This is part two, with the blistering cover of “Racer X.”

[READ: September 17, 2012] Bluebeard

I’ve mentioned this book a few times in the last couple of days as something that I’d been struggling with.  And, indeed, I found it to be a little slow going.  I was excited to start reading it because, as the subtitle says, this is an autobiography of Rabo Karabekian, an artist who appeared in Breakfast of Champions–I love that Vonnegut keeps working within his own universe.  But there was something about the early pages of the story that were just not that compelling.

Rabo is having a hard time getting his book going, and while that is a dramatic effect, I had a hard time getting into the book too.  It’s not that complicated of a story.  There are really only about a half dozen characters in the book:

Rabo–he is an American Abstract Expressionist painter (contemporary of Jackson Pollack, Jasper Johns, et al).
Circe Berman–she is an author who writes under the pseudonym Polly Madison (ha).  Madison’s books look at the real life of American young people and are staggeringly popular.
Paul Slazinger–Rabo’s next door neighbor who spends most of his time in Rabo’s house, although he and Rabo mostly ignore each other.  Slazinger is a writer with a decades long writer’s block.
Dan Gregory–a famous artist for whom Rabo apprenticed.  Gregory was such a good detailist that he once created a perfect forgery of a bill (on a dare).  Gregory was also a terrible racist and philanderer and treated Rabo with contempt at best.
Marilee Kemp–Gregory’s mistress and sometime muse.  She inadvertently sends Rabo an encouraging letter on behalf of Gregory and then she and Rabo begin a writing relationship which blossoms when they eventually meet. (more…)

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Kurt Vonnegut–God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (1999)

Posted in Advice, Bombs, Books about writers, Consumerism, Cymbals Eat Guitars, Death, Dr. Jack Kevorkian, Essays, Funny (ha ha), Hitler, Holocaust, Isaac Asimov, Isaac Newton, KEXP 90.3 FM--Seattle, WA, Kurt Vonnegut, Marriage (Happy), NPR/PRI/PBS, Sexism, Short Books, Suicide, Violence, War, William Shakespeare, WNYC--93.9 New York on September 26, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: CYMBALS EAT GUITARS-Live on KEXP June 18, 2009 (2009).

Cymbals Eat Guitars are from Staten Island (with members from New Jersey).  They have released two albums, although this recording is from after the release of their first album.    They play four songs:  “And the Hazy Sea,” “Cold Spring,” “Tunguska,” and “Wind Phoenix.”   They are noisy songs (mostly) with squalls of guitars (squalls is a good word since two of the guys are from Manahawkin, New Jersey.

The band has true progenitors in the indie rock scene–there’s sounds of Pavement, The Replacements,  even more melodic Sonic Youth .  They play noisy guitars and the vocals veer from softly sung to loudly screamed (often within the same line).    “Cold Spring” starts like a kind of shoegazery song and then after almost three minutes it turns into a  blast of pummeling rock with a noisy guitar section, before moving into a third more melodic section.

There’s   a lengthy interview with the band, where they give a shout out to New Jersey and seem genuinely surprised by the success they’ve had.  It’s a good show, and you can hear it here

[READ: September 25, 2012] God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian

Again, against my better judgment I brought this Vonnegut book home too because it was on the shelf (and it was very short).  I still haven’t finished Bluebeard yet, but I have been curious about this book for some time.  It references Vonnegut’s early novel God Bless You, Mr Rosewater, but it also name checks Dr Jack Kevorkian.  So just what is it?

Well, it is collection of radio spots that Vonnegut did for WNYC radio in New York back in 1998.  Vonnegut claimed that he went to Kevorkian’s facility, was strapped in and almost killed multiple times, but Kevorkian brought him back each time creating a near-death experience. And each time Vonnegut travelled through that “blue tunnel,” he would interview a dead person.

The people he interviews vary quite a lot in fame and stature: (more…)

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Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.–Between Time and Timbuktu or Prometheus-5 a Space Fantasy (1972)

Posted in David O'Dell, Death, Funny (ha ha), Hitler, Kurt Vonnegut, Marriage Trouble, NPR/PRI/PBS, Religion, Sci-fi, Sexism, Technology, The Flaming Lips, The Future, Time Travel, Violence on September 25, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE FLAMING LIPS-Dark Side of the Moon live at Hangout Music Festival, May 2012 (2012).

Recently, the Flaming Lips and friends released a version of Dark Side of the Moon that was noisy and chaotic and resembled the original in some  ways but departed from it radically in others.  When Palladia aired this concert of the band performing the album in its entirety I wasn’t sure what to expect.

I was pleasantly surprised that their rendition of the album is quite faithful to the original.  There’s plenty of Flaming Lips-isms in it, but it sounds a lot closer to the Pink Floyd version than The Flaming Lips and Stardeath and White Dwarfs with Henry Rollins and Peaches version.  And that’s a good thing.

I have to admit the audio wasn’t as clear as I would have expected (which is surprising for the Lips)–it was very hard to hear Wayne when he was talking.  That may have worked well for the singing though as he sounded almost exactly like David Gilmour on most of the songs.  The stage was also filled with people.  In addition to the four band members, there was a cast of dancers dressed like Swiss maids, there were some extra musicians  and two women.  One, dressed in a gold lame body suit (with wings) sang all of the wailing vocals on the album (and did a very good job) and the other I’m not sure what she did–neither woman was introduced during the aired set so I don’t know who they were.

Many bands throw things out into the crowd during a set, well, during “Money,” Wayne Coyne tossed out giant confetti balloons that were filled with actual money, allegedly $10,000 donated by none other than Dave Matthews.  That’s pretty intense and hopefully didn’t cause any damage.

Check Palladia for when they’re going to air it again.  I just learned that there is a You Tube video of the whole concert (more than just Dark Side of the Moon) and you can watch it here:

It’s a good fun set and shows just how much Stephen Drodz does on stage (I mean, seriously, check out the guitar he plays in “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song”) and that Wayne’s hands must be either very cold or have no sensation.

[READ: September 24, 2012] Between Time and Timbuktu

I have been reading a lot of Vonnegut lately. I had it in my head that I would just blow through all of his books.  But I admit I’m getting a little burnt out.  Deadeye Dick and Galàpagos were kind of numbing and Bluebeard which I’m working through now is fun, but a little exhausting.  There’s no reason I should be ordering new Vonnegut books to read now, but I saw that the library had a copy of Between Time and Timbuktu (which is hard to find) and since I won’t be using that library for much longer, I decided to order it.

And I’m glad I did.  Between Time and Timbuktu was a TV movie made by compiling a bunch of scenes from Vonnegut’s first few books.  The basic script was by David O’Dell and Vonnegut himself had a hand in working on it (like “grafting the head of a box turtle onto the neck of a giraffe”).  And as the story progresses you can see some of the best set pieces from his novels.

But the framing device is new.  A man, Stony Stephenson has won a jingle contest for Blast-Off Space Food.  The TV crew appear at his house (and meet his mother in a dressing gown (she’s a funny character)) to break the news.  He gets dragged away and a few months later we see the blast off of the rocket.  When he gets into space, Stony will launch into the Chrono-Synclastic Infundibulum (the Infundibulum comes from Sirens of Titan). (more…)

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