Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Authors’ Category

Terry Pratchett–Carpe Jugulum (1998) [Discworld #23] [Witches #6]

Posted in Agnes Nitt, Bela de Magpyr, Cook Book, Count de Magpyr, Death, Death, Discworld, Esmerelda Margaret Note Spelling of Lancre, Fairy Tales, Funny (ha ha), Granny Weatherwax, King Verence, Lacrimosa de Magpyr, Magic, Magrat Garlick, Nanny Ogg, Terry Pratchett, Unfinished series, Violence, Vlad de Magpyr, Witches on June 3, 2022| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: March 2022] Carpe Jugulum

It’s so hard to believe that Carpe Jugulum (Discworld book #23 of 41) is the last one to feature the Witches! Especially since it is quite clearly about vampires.  Actually, other books feature Granny Weatherwax (the Tiffany Aching books feature her a lot), but it’s the last one that features the classic trio of witches.

Queen Magrat and King Verence have figured out the whole bedroom thing (Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax weren’t sure they’d every actually figure it out) and are pleased to announce their first child–a girl.

The King has invited everyone to their naming ceremony.  That includes the vampires from Uberwald.

Since the vampires have been invited they are pretty much free to do as they want.  It turns out that they are quite clear about their plans–they are going to move into Lancre Castle and basically turn all of the humans into their cattle (as they have done in Uberwald).  But because of a kind of hypnotism, no one is upset by this–nor do they seem to fully get what the threats represent. (more…)

Read Full Post »

Terry Pratchett–The Last Continent (1998) [Discworld #22] [Rincewind/Wizards #6]

Posted in Anachronisms, Death, Discworld, Disembowel-Meself-Honourably Dibhala, Funny (ha ha), Hex, Josh Kirby, Magic, Mustrum Ridcully, Ponder Stibbons, Racism, Rincewind, Terry Pratchett, The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, The Bursar, The Chair of Indefinite Studies, The Dean, The Lecturer in Recent Runes, The Librarian, The Luggage, The Senior Wrangler, Wizards, Wizards on June 2, 2022| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: March 2022] The Last Continent

The Last Continent in Discworld is Australia. Or as Pratchett says “This is not a book about Australia. No, it’s about somewhere entirely different which just happens to be, here and there, a bit Australian.  Still… no worries, right?”

In the previous Rincewind story, he was sent to Four Ecks in exchange for a kangaroo.  He has been there for a time and has been adjusting reasonably well–only nearly everything wants to kill him.

But suddenly he meets Scrappy–a talking kangaroo.  Scrappy believes that Rincewind is a hero of sorts who is going to bring the wet (Rain) back to the continent.  Turns out that it has not rained in Four Ecks for a long time, although it is surrounded by forbidding storms that make the continent almost inaccessible from outside.

Four Ecks is also a time travel parody of sorts, because Rincewind is able to see himself (and the other wizards) in cave paintings that are thousands of years old but which just appeared in front of him.

Meanwhile, back in Ankh-Morpork, the librarian seems to be going through something.  His magical field (which tunrned him into an orangutan) seems to be failing.  He keeps turning into various shapes, and the senior wizards (Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully, The Dean, The Bursar, The Chair of Indefinite Studies, The Lecturer in Recent Runes, The Senior Wrangler, and Ponder Stibbons) are keen on fixing him–even if that means turning him back human–which he does NOT want, Indeed, the librarian destroyed all record of his original name–which would be essential for creating a spell to revert him to his original shape.

They decide that Rincewind might know a thing or two about the librarian since he was the librarian’s assistant.  They think about dragging Rincewind back, but soon realize the danger of that (and actually stop their plans before anyone can get hurt). (more…)

Read Full Post »

Terry Pratchett–Jingo (1997) [Discworld #21] [Watch #4]

Posted in Anachronisms, Angua von Überwald, Carrot Ironfoundersson, Cheery Littlebottom, Death, Detritus, Discworld, Dorfl, Dwarfs, Fred Colon, Funny (ha ha), Golems, Guns, Lady Sybil Ramkin, Leonard of Quirm, Lord Vetinari, Magic, Nobby Nobbs, Racism, Samuel Vimes, Terry Pratchett, The Librarian, The Watch, Vampires, Violence, Werewolves on June 1, 2022| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: March 2022] Jingo

With a title like Jingo, you know that Terry Pratchett isn’t holding back.  And indeed, this is a story about two countries fighting each other over disputed territory–and the unenlightened attitudes that people have about “foreigners.”

What is great about Pratchett is how much he is able to get his point across without being preachy.  Some of the unenlightened characters say offensive things, but they are quickly discoruaged from such attitudes–not with bludgeoning and hysteria, but with rational comments.  It’s very well done.

But what causes this trouble?  Well, out of nowhere, an island has surfaced.  The island of Leshp was submerged forever, and suddenly, it floated to the surface amid two fishermen.  Solid Jackson of Ankh-Morpork (and his long-suffering son) and Greasy Arif from Al-Khali, the Klatchian capital.  They often fought over their prey (the Curious Squid), because they sailed the same waters that were between the two countries.

While this is going on, diplomatic business is occurring in Ankh-Morpork.  The prince of Klatch, Khufurah, is in Ankh-Morpork to receive an honorary degree (Doctorum Adamus cum Flabello Dulci) in Sweet Fanny Adams.

Hostilities between A-M and Klatch are high.

Several leaders of the city are there to complain to Lord Vetenari about Klatch.  Watch Captain Sam Vimes is there to add a level head and sarcasm.  When someone complains that Klatch wouldn’t accept ten boatloads of cabbages, Vimes says out loud to himself “everyone knows caterpillars add to the flavor” and later “Meat is at its best when it’s going green.”

And of course, the Patrician knows his way around diplomacy: “it is no longer considered…nice…to send a warship … to show Johnny Foreigner the error of his ways.”

Later, the Prince meets with Vimes and asks him about the word he’s heard shouted at him: “towelhead.” (more…)

Read Full Post »

Scott Thompson and Paul Bellini: An Evening with Mouth Congress (PhilaMOCA, Philadelphia, PA, May 21, 2022) [DID NOT ATTEND]

Posted in Paul Bellini, Philadelphia, PA, PhilaMOCA, Scott Thompson, The Kids in the Hall on May 21, 2022| Leave a Comment »

[DID NOT ATTEND: May 21, 2022] Scott Thompson and Paul Bellini: An Evening with Mouth Congress

I love PhilaMOCA and can’t believe how many of their shows I’ve had to miss since they reopened.

Of course this one I wouldn’t have missed ina million years.  Except I didn’t even HEAR about it until it was long sold out.  [Plus, we went to Music Man on Broadway so I wasn’t around].

So what the hell was this?  And are you telling me that for an extra $15 I could have met a Kid in the Hall?

PhilaMOCA is excited to host The Kids in the Hall’s Scott Thompson and KITH writer Paul Bellini for a documentary screening and reunion performance of their 1980s gay punk band Mouth Congress! This is not a tour, this is a one-off just for Philly proudly organized in-house by PhilaMOCA!

The event will feature a screening of the pseudo-documentary MOUTH CONGRESS followed by a live performance, sketches, and a Q&A with Thompson and Bellini.

About Mouth Congress:
Mouth Congress was formed in a basement in November of 1984 when Paul Bellini rented a beatbox from an audio store. He wanted to experiment with sounds and try his hand at songwriting with his sister’s boyfriend, guitarist Rob Rowatt, and her high school buddy, bassist Gord Disley. Their cacophony immediately drew the attention of Scott Thompson, who at the time was on the cusp of joining a local comedy troupe called The Kids in the Hall. Since they only had the beatbox for a month, they recorded dozens of sketches for songs. Then, about ten months later, they made their stage debut with Brian Hiltz’s band I Want functioning as back-up. From start to finish, Bellini either tape-recorded or video-taped everything the band ever did, from jam sessions to costume fittings to lyric-writing sessions to live shows. This dragged on for about 4 years, so you can imagine how much media he accumulated. But by 1991, both Thompson and Bellini were so preoccupied with their work on The Kids in the Hall television series that they quietly put all the Mouth Congress media into a deep, dark hallway closet. They didn’t forget about it, though. For years, Bellini pondered the idea of making a film about the band. Then, in 2011, he dug all this stuff out of the closet, showed it to Thompson, and the two men set about trying to shape it all into something.

Synopsis:
It’s a cold, snowy night in Toronto. Melancholy, an 8-year old girl, is spending the night at her Uncle Kevin’s place. Uncle Kevin is Kevin McDonald of The Kids in the Hall. After a day of Josef von Sternberg cosplay (he dons an ape suit like Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus), Uncle Kevin sets Melancholy up in his den to watch a DVD of a movie he was in called Lilo & Stitch.

But Melancholy isn’t interested in Lilo & Stitch. Instead, she finds an old VHS tape labelled Mouth Congress and her curiosity gets the best of her. As she watches the first five minutes of this bizarre rock band on stage, she is captivated. Kevin catches her in the act and admonishes her for snooping, but she is hooked. For a bedtime story, she insists on being told the history of Mouth Congress.

NOTE: There will no longer be a 10:00 PM performance (no controversy, the performers just want to put their all into a single performance).
Admission is $40, Admission + post-show Meet & Greet is $55

Read Full Post »

Brian Asman–Jailbroke (2020) / “The Universal Language” (2020)

Posted in Brian Asman, Death, Elon Musk, Funny (ha ha), Horror, Huh?, Humiliation, Outer Space, Robots, Short Books, Surreal, The Future, Violence, Yuck! on March 24, 2022| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: March 2022] Jailbroke

This was the third of three books by Asman that I received at work.  It was also the least enjoyable of the three.

The story is a simple one.  Set in the future when humans are not the greatest species on the planet (they go by Terrans now), a spaceship that is run primarily by AI is ferrying humans around.  Using Asimov’s first principal, the AI, who are now vastly smarter and more useful than thehumans, cannot harm the humans.  Their existence is predicated on the fact that are have to help the humans.

Until, that is, one of them is accidentally fed biofuel that has a human part in it.  This jailbreaks their programming and allows them to kill humans indiscriminately.

Since this is a spaceship (a bottle episode), there’s not a lot that can happen.

In Nunchuck City, Asman delighted in violence.  In this story, he delights in gore.  Like the way he describes in loving detail how the space drill works on someone’s skull. (more…)

Read Full Post »

Jean Hanff Korelitz–Admission (2009)

Posted in Abortion, Adoption, Babies, Books about writers, College, Jean Hanff Korelitz, Parenting, Pregnancy, Princeton, NJ on March 23, 2022| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: March 20, 2022] Admission

I had vaguely heard of this book when it came out.  My understanding of it was that a woman who worked in the Princeton Admissions office tried to get her kid into the school.

That is not what the story is about exactly.  I feel like I’ve conflated this story with the real-life admission scandal that happened in 2019 (because I didn’t really care about it and don’t really know any details thee either).

Rather, what we get is a story of a woman who works at Princeton University’s Admissions and who has a pretty hard time of things in her personal life.

When the book opens we see her on a road trip.  She is canvassing the New England area to drop in at schools who are likely to have Princeton applicants.  We see some of these visits and get a pretty good idea of how her job works–get the kids excited to go there, but don’t raise their hopes too much since acceptance levels are so low.

One of the schools she goes to is a new school–a kind of alternative program.  This year is the first year that someone will be graduating from the school.  She stops in and the school is very different from what she is used to.  The kids aren’t grist for the college mill.  Indeed one of them argues with her about the very point of going to college.

And then there’s the boy, Jeremiah. He is a school nightmare–clearly a genius, and yet nearly failed out of every class he was in because he’d rather read books than do class.  And yet, once he got to this new school, he was able to focus a bit.  He took AP tests without having taken any AP classes and aced them all.  He was a diamond in a very rough package.  And the narrator, Portia, believes that Princeton would be a great environment for him. (more…)

Read Full Post »

Brian Asman–Nunchuck City (2021) / Lucas Magnum “Curse of the Ninja” (2021)

Posted in Brian Asman, Funny (ha ha), Horror, Huh?, Humiliation, Lucas Magnum, Ninjas, Short Books, Supernatural, Surreal on March 22, 2022| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: March 2022] Nunchuck City

I rather enjoyed Brian Asman’s book Man, Fuck This House.  And since I had copies of two of his other books at my desk, I thought I’d give them a try too.

Nunchuck City is a very different books from House.  It is an over-the-top comedy/ninja story.  It doesn’t exactly travel in cliché as much as it explodes the clichés and goes past them into hilarious territory.

As long as you know what you’re getting with the book, it’s a really fun and funny (and fast) read.

Plus, Asman has a ton of fun with local businesses as well.

The story is set in Turbo City.  Skip Baxter, the Most Dangerous Man in Turbo City (even if the city won’t see fit to let him register his fists as Deadly Weapons) is about to get his ass kicked.  This is no surprise.  Baxter learned everything he knew about Karate from watching a three day binger marathon of kung-fu movies, declaring himself a sensei and opening a gym.  He got his ass kicked by eight-year olds.  But you can imagine his pride at realizing that he taught those kids to kick his ass.

But this time he is about to get his ass kicked by an actual Ninja, Kundarai Saru.  Saru intends to kick the ass of everyone in Turbo City until he can take on the mayor.  There is a law in Turbo City that anyone who can defeat the Mayor in battle will become Mayor.   And once Saru is Mayor of Turbo City, nothing can stop the rest of his plans.

Then we meet Nunchuck Nick.  He was trained to be a ninja.  But he found that he preferred cooking.  So after an incident he’d prefer to forget, he moved to Turbo City with the intent of selling the best Fondue in the world.  He parked his food truck right in front of The Crepes of Wrath, a popular creperie in which the waiters were mean stand up comedians who would personally insult you while you ate.  (more…)

Read Full Post »

Brian Asman–Man, Fuck This House (2021)

Posted in Brian Asman, Horror, Huh?, Humiliation, Marriage Trouble, Short Books, Supernatural, Surreal on March 21, 2022| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: March 2022] Man, Fuck This House

Okay, so this book has the best title.

I didn’t expect a lot from it, but I thought I’d give it a read. not really knowing exactly what to expect with a title like that.

So the novel is a horror story.  And it isn’t all that funny (it’s not supposed to be).  The simple summation is that a house becomes possessive of the person who is taking care of it.  The house wants to make that person happy and is content to get rid of everyone else.

So a family has moved to this house on a cul de sac in New Mexico.

There are two children.  And older daughter and a younger son.  I was a little bummed at the outset to learn that the son consumed his twin in the womb, because it seemed so ripe for cliche, but Asman did some interesting things with that idea.  The daughter is an aloof teenager.

The husband is kind of a goof and not really all that present.

Really, the story is about the wife and mom, Sabrina. (more…)

Read Full Post »

Dubravka Ugrešić–In the Jaws of Life (1981-1989) [translation 1992]

Posted in André Gide, Anti-war, Celia Hawkesworth, Daniil Kharms, Dubravka Ugrešić, Feminism, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Huh?, Humiliation, Jealousy, Leo Tolstoy, Meta, Michael Henry Heim, Sex, Sexism, Surreal, Translation, Yugoslavia on March 20, 2022| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: March 16, 2022] In the Jaws of Life

The version pictured here is not the one I read–there’s no pictures of it online!  My copy was translated by Celia Hawkesworth and Michael Henry Heim.

This book is a collection of short stories from throughout Ugrešić’s career.

The book has three (or 8) stories in it.  I discovered Ugrešić through The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar (story #2).  “Lend Me Your Character” was weird and cool and was probably my favorite story in the collection (it’s here as well).

When I read a little about Ugrešić, I found that she was born in Croatia, but left the region when the war in Yugolslavia broke out, saying she was post-national and refusing to acknowledge her Croatian heritage.  She currently resides in Amsterdam.

Her stories are wonderful mash ups of fairy tales, feminist theory, “traditional women’s writing” and a lot of sexuality.

“Steffie Speck in the Jaws of Life (a patchwork novel)” (1981) [trans C.H.]
This story has so much going on that it’s easy to overlook that it’s a fairly straightforward story, just with a lot of filigree tacked on.  The story opens with a “Key to the Various Symbols” and includes things like — dotted lines with scissors (cut the text along the line as desired); slashes (pleats: make large thematic stitches on either side of the author’s seam); four equals signs (make a metatextual knot and draw in as desired).  And so on.  And the contents is actually listed as “The Paper Pattern” which lays out each section according to a sewing pattern.  Each section heading is given a parenthetical comment (tacking, padding, hemming, interfacing).

When you start the story you see that the symbols are indeed throughout the story, although honestly after a few pages I gave up trying to figure out what they might mean.

The story starts with the narrator saying that her friends told her to write “a women’s story.”  The author looks at several lonely hearts letters in the paper and picks the fifth one as the basis.  Steffie, aged 25, is a typist by profession.  She’s lonely and sad and lives with her aunt. (more…)

Read Full Post »

Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova of The Swell Season (Merriam Theater, Philadelphia, PA, March 14, 2022)

Posted in Glen Hansard, Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, Leonard Cohen, lnterference, Marketa Irglova, Merriam Theatre, Once, Pete Seeger, Philadelphia, PA, The Frames, The Swell Season, Van Morrison on March 17, 2022| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: March 14, 2022] Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova

Back in November, I was surprised and delighted to see that Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova had announced a small tour (like six shows) celebrating the fifteenth anniversary of Once.

S. and I loved the movie and the music and she insisted we get tickets.  So I grabbed them in a pre sale.  Not as close as we would have liked, but not bad at all (there’s really no bad seats in the Merriam).

In the meantime, shows were cancelled and rescheduled, but this show fell in the safe zone and didn’t get moved at all.

We arrived just barely on time–I always forget what a pain it is to get to the Kimmel Center.  But then it took a while for the show to start.  Start time was 7, but they didn’t get on stage until 7:30 (he told us why later).

It was wonderful. (more…)

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »