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Archive for the ‘Daredevils’ Category

Matt Phelan–Around the World: Three Remarkable Journeys (2013)

Posted in Biking, David Bowie, Donny McCaslin, Fashion, Feminism, Graphic Novel, History, Joshua Slocum, Jules Verne, Marriage Trouble, Matt Phelan, Memoirs, Nellie Bly, Non-fiction, Ocean, Pink Floyd, Sexism, Thomas Stevens, Tiny Desk Concert on March 30, 2017| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: DONNY McCASLIN-Tiny Desk Concert #590 (January 9, 2017).

Donny McCaslin’s band was responsible for the jazzy music that propelled David Bowie’s final album.  As the Tiny Desk blurb says:

David Bowie had long wanted to make a record with a jazz band, and on Jan. 8 of last year, he realized his dream with the release of Blackstar. Two days later, he was gone. Donny McCaslin’s band helped him make that record, and now, a year later, we pay tribute to Bowie and Blackstar by bringing McCaslin’s band

As a bandleader and sax player, [McCaslin’s] put out a dozen albums, the most recent of which is Beyond Now, with musicians Tim Lefebvre on bass, drummer Mark Guiliana and keyboardist Jason Lindner.

Beyond Now was recorded after Blackstar, features a few Bowie covers and stretches the band’s own usual boundaries. For this Tiny Desk concert, you can hear an extraordinary group playing extraordinary music — including an instrumental version of “Lazarus,” from Blackstar.

The band plays three pieces.  “Shake Loose” is 7 and a half minutes.  The music is great behind the sax—dramatic and interesting.  I think I just don’t care for the sound of saxophones as much these days, because I love the bass thumping and the great sounds from the keys but the soloing doesn’t excite me.  I love in the middle of the song that there are really cool spacey sound on the keys.   And the whole middle section where it’s the keys playing weirdo stuff and the drums keeping a groovy jazz beat–that’s awesome.

So I may be the only person in America who has not heard the whole of Blackstar.  I actually don’t even really like the one song I did hear (I don’t care for the jazzy parts).  So I can’t compare this six-minute instrumental version to the original of “Lazarus.”  I love that the keyboard is playing a very convincing grungy guitar sound.  I’m not sure if the sax is doing a vocal line or just playing around, but I love the music for this song a lot.

“Glory” is about the glory of the creation of the beautiful world that we live in “that will hopefully be intact as we move forward.”  This is an 11 minute song with all kinds of great swirling keyboard sounds.  I really like this song—the bass and keys together are great.  And either I’ve grown more used to the sax or its mixed a little lower, but it works so much better with the music.  About three minutes in there’s a lengthy trippy mid-70s Pink Floyd echoing synth solo.  Which is pretty cool.  So overall, I really enjoyed this set.  And maybe I need to go give Blackstar a listen.

[READ: March 25, 2016] Around

I really enjoyed Phelan’s Bluffton.  The story was interesting and I really enjoyed Phelan’s artwork–subtle with delicate coloring and very thin, expressive lines.

This book also contains Phelan’ wonderful artwork and the story (or stories) are also really interesting.  For this is a book about three remarkable journeys around the world.

Phelan gives a fictionalized (but accurate) history of the adventures of Thomas Stevens (Wheelman in 1884), Nellie Bly (Girl Reporter 1889) and Joshua Slocum (Mariner 1895).

I hadn’t heard of the two men and I found their stories quiet fascinating.  I knew of Bly’s journey but I didn’t know all of the details and I found it equally interesting. (more…)

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Peter Benchley [adapted for young people by Karen Wojtyla]–Shark Life: True Stories about Sharks & the Sea (2005)

Posted in Adventure, C., Children's Books, Daredevils, Death, Drownproofing, Fears, Jaws, Karen Wojtyla, Nature, No BS! Brass Band, Ocean, Peter Benchley, Scientists, Sharks, Swimming, The American Sportsman, Threats, Tiny Desk Concert on February 26, 2017| Leave a Comment »

sahrakSOUNDTRACK: NO BS! BRASS BAND-Tiny Desk Concert #280 (June 15, 2013).

nobsWith a name like No BS! Brass Band, you think you know what you’re getting: brass and lots of it.  And while that is true, the Band goes way beyond what I anticipated a brass band would sound like (nothing like the far more traditional Canadian Brass for instance).

The blurb states:

Funky and danceable, the NO BS! Brass Band takes after the full black-music continuum you hear in groups like Rebirth or the Hot 8. But it’s also proggy, and a bit brutalizing, and full of pride in a different Southern outpost. The group’s new album is called RVA All Day, after all.  [I don’t know what that last line refers to].

Recently, Koehler, Pace and nine other musicians piled into a bus and journeyed up the freeway to NPR Music’s Tiny Desk in Washington, D.C. They blasted us with songs from the new album — it was so loud, you could hear the music on the other side of the building, a floor down.

The band includes:  Lance Koehler, drums ; Reggie Pace, trombone ; Bryan Hooten, trombone/vocals ; John Hulley, trombone ; Dillard Watt, bass trombone ; David Hood, alto saxophone ; Marcus Tenney, trumpet ; Sam Koff, trumpet ; Ben Court, trumpet ; Taylor Barnett, trumpet and Stefan Demetriadis, tuba.  And they play three super high energy largely instrumental songs that are obviously jazzy but which also have elements of the most fun marching band you’ve ever heard along with some rapping, some chanting and lots and lots of clapping.

The first song is all about “RVA All Day.”  And yet since that’s all they chant, I still don’t know what it means.   While the whole band plays loudly and powerfully, there’s a few solo moments as well.  First a trombone solo followed by a sax solo, then a trumpet and a super wild trombone solo (he gets some truly great, crazy sounds from that thing).  And then a huge surprise, midway through the song is a rap through a megaphone.

“Run Around” has a sing along to begin the song (and again, vocals through the megaphone).  It is also lively and a lot of fun.  The final song, “Infamous”sounds a lot more jazzy/big band.  It’s got a really nice groove.  The middle has a section with just tuba and trumpet where the rest of the band claps and shouts “Ho!” and it sounds great.  It’s also interesting watching how the different players “store” their instruments in different ways while clapping.

No BS! Brass band will totally make you wiggle your hips.

[READ: August 20, 2016] Shark Life

C. had to pick a book for summer reading and he chose this one.  He enjoyed it so much, that he encouraged me to read it too.  And I’m really glad I did.  Although it wasn’t until writing this that I realized that this book was adapted for young people by Karen Wojtyla.  And yet I can’t find any mention of a grown up version of this book anywhere.  So who knows.

Anyhow,  Peter Benchley (who died in 2006) is the author of Jaws, and this book is full of stories of his life in and on the sea.  For, in addition to being an author, Benchley was a diver and explorer.  And his tales are both exciting and full of conservationist ideas.

The book opens in 1974. After the success of Jaws, Benchley had been invited to Australia to be on The American Sportsman.  He was going to be swimming in a cage with sharks feeding around him.  They put him in the cage, strapped all kinds of good food to it and left him there (okay they were close by).  But a few things went awry and suddenly things weren’t quite as safe as they could be. The shark got caught in Benchley’s air line and then panicked.  And a panicking shark is never a good thing. (more…)

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McSweeney’s Mammoth Treaury of Thrilling Tales (2002) [McSweeney’s #10]

Posted in Adia Victoria, Aimee Bender, Big Books, Carol Emschwiller, Cats, Chris Offutt, Circus, Dan Chaon, Daredevils, Dave Eggers, Death, Demons, Dinosaurs, Drinking, Drugs, Dystopia, Elephants, Elmore Leonard, End of the World, Explorers, Fears, Ghosts, Glen David Gold, Greed, Guns, Harlan Ellison, Hitler, Horror, Jim Sheppard, Karen Joy Fowler, Kelly Link, Laurie King, Law, Lies, Marriage (Happy), Marriage Trouble, McSweeney's, Meta, Michael Chabon, Michael Crichton, Michael Moorcock, Military, Monsters, Murder, Native Americans, Nazis, Neil Gaiman, Nick Cave, Nick Hornby, Noir, Old West, Revenge, Rick Moody, Sci-fi, Sex, Sherlock Holmes, Sherman Alexie, Short Story, Stephen King, Threats, Time Travel, Tiny Desk Concert, Unfinished series, Violence, Virginity (Loss of), Yuck! on December 20, 2016| Leave a Comment »

thrilignSOUNDTRACK: ADIA VICTORIA-Tiny Desk Concert #545 (June 30, 2016).

adiaAdia Victoria has a rough, raw voice that goes well with her simple, exposed guitar sound.  The blurb says her music “carries the singular perspective of a Southern black woman with a Seventh Day Adventist upbringing, who never felt like she’d fit in.”

She sings three song, mostly in a great, raspy voice.  For “Stuck in the South” she actually seems to be gritting her teeth as she sings: “I don’t know nothing ’bout Southern belles / but I can tell you something ’bout Southern hell.”  When the first verse ends, and her band kicks in, it adds such interesting textures.  A distorted bass and a lead guitar playing quietly distorted sounds.  This song is really captivating.

“And Then You Die” with its swirling sounds and keyboards has a very distinctly Nick Cave feel–gothic in the Southern sense of the word.  Indeed, the first verse is spoken in a delivery that would make Nick proud. This is no to say she cribbed from Cave but it would work very well as a companion song  I really like the way it builds, but the ending is so abrupt–I could have used some more verses.

After the second song the band heads away and Bob says “They’re all leaving you.”  She looks at them and growls, “Get off the stage!” to much laughter.

She sings the final song “Heathen” with just her on acoustic guitar.  It is a simple two chord song.  It’s less interesting than the others, but again, it’s the lyrics that stand out: “I guess that makes me a heathen, something lower than dirt / I hear them calling me heathen, ooh like they think it hurts.”

I’m curious to hear just what Adia would do with these songs when she’s not in this Tiny format.  I imagine she can be really powerful.

[READ: November 23, 2016] McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales

For some reason or another I have put off reading this McSweeney’s volume for many years.  This is technically McSweeney’s #10, although it was also released in this printing from a  major publisher. Sadly for me, my McSweeney’s subscription had expired sometime around here so I’ve never actually seen the “official” Volume 10 which I understand has the exact same content but a slightly different cover.

One of the reasons I’ve put off reading this was the small print and pulpy paper–I don’t like pulpy paper.  And it was pretty long, too.

But I think the big reason is that I don’t really like genre fiction.  But I think that’s the point of this issue.  To give people who read non-genre fiction some exposure to genre stuff.

Interestingly I think I’ve learned that I do enjoy some genre fiction after all.  And yet, a lot of the stories here really weren’t very genre-y.  Or very thrilling.  They seemed to have trappings of genre ideas–mystery, horror–but all the while remaining internal stories rather than action-packed.

Which is not to say I didn’t enjoy anything here. I enjoyed a bunch of the stories quite a bit, especially if I didn’t think of them as genre stories.  Although there were a couple of less than exiting stories here, too. (more…)

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Noelle Stevenson, Grace Ellis, Brooke Allen–Lumberjanes: Vol. 2: Friendship to the Max (2015)

Posted in Adventure, Boom! Box, Daredevils, David Bowie, Diane Coffee, Feminism, Foxygen, Funny (ha ha), Grace Ellis, Graphic Novel, John Allison, Jon Bon Jovi, Jurassic Park, Kel McDonald, Lissa Treiman, Mick Jagger, Noelle Stevenson, Summer Camp, Threats, Tiny Desk Concert, Unfinished series, XPN Fest on December 14, 2016| Leave a Comment »

lumberhjanes2 SOUNDTRACK: DIANE COFFEE-Tiny Desk Concert #483 (November 2, 2015).

dianeI first heard of Diane Coffee from NPR.  The band’s song “Spring Breathes” is bizarre and wonderful–simultaneously difficult and catchy.  I was especially excited to see them play at XPNFest, but sadly we arrived just as they finished up and I missed my opportunity to see singer Shaun Fleming all glammed up (in a sailor suit).

This Tiny Desk Concert is a bit more mellow (and acoustic), but it is hardly Tiny as there is a string trio, a drummer and a guitarist.  As well as a bassist and keyboardist in addition to Shaun Fleming with acoustic guitar and vocals (and blue eye shadow).  Fleming was the drummer in Foxygen and does a lot of voice over work.

“Spring Breathes” is not as dramatic as on the record (which has some cool electronic drops and changes of tempo). But it sounds great with the strings (I love the pizzicato parts).  This version also has a very glam-era David Bowie feel.  Fleming’s voice is great–powerful and full, completely unaffected and spot on (the part where he sings the descending riff near the end of the song is fabulous).  And the harmonies are all perfect, very 1970s.  The song retains its several parts (I love when the song shifts to a quick funky bass section) and the band handles it perfectly.

“Not That Easy” is a mellow song with Fleming singing primarily in a gentle falsetto.  It’s a fairly simple song but the joint guitar solos are really beautiful.

For something a little more upbeat, they play “Mayflower.”  Fleming doesn’t play guitar on this one, but he dances around (rather like Mick Jagger).  He is wonderfully flamboyant both in motion and in singing (he’s got a cool raspy 1970s singing style for this song). And again the harmonies are great.

He is quite out of breath after this song, which is funny. They are going to play one from their first album, a song called “Green.”   His voice sounds particularly familiar on this one–I’m thinking like when Jon Bon Jovi really belts out his lyrics–and it’s just perfect for the song.

Fleming has a charming persona.  I really enjoyed this acoustic version and I’m glad to hear that he can convert the studio magic into a live setting.

[READ: March 22, 2016] Lumberjanes 2

I love the premise behind Lumberjanes.  The Lumberjanes are a kind of Girl Scout/Wilderness Adventure group.  They have been around for a long time and the Janes must follow the manual to achieve their various badges.  I love the way the book is set up around an “actual” field manual from 1984 (tenth edition) which has been:

Prepared for the Miss Quinzella Thiskwin Penniquiqul Thistle Crumpet’s Camp for [written in] HARDCORE LADY-TYPES.

I was really excited to read this second volume since I loved the first one so much.  But I was a little disappointed by this one.

I feel like we could have used a short reminder of who all the girls were–there were a couple who I couldn’t tell apart [I know if you’re reading the issues as they come out that’s not a problem, but how much work can it be for collected volumes?].

What I didn’t like was the way the story went in a totally unexpected direction.

It started promising enough with the girls’ counselor being shocked and afraid after the recent supernatural events. She wants them to just stay around the cabins and make friendship bracelets to get the Friendship to the Craft badge. (more…)

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Eddie Campbell and Dan Best–The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard: A novel with typographical acrobatics and illustrational feats in an ideal production of entirely new tricks, statuesque acts and performances (2008)

Posted in #10yearsof01, Acrobats, Adventure, Bears, Canadian Music, Charles Blondin, Circus, Clowns, Constellation Records, Dan Best, Eddie Campbell, First Second :01, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Graphic Novel, History, Jules Léotard, Lord George Sanger, The Great Farini, Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band, William Leonard Hunt on May 28, 2016| Leave a Comment »

leotardSOUNDTRACK: THEE SILVER MT. ZION MEMORIAL ORCHESTRA & TRA-LA-LA BAND-Horses in the Sky [CST033] (2005).

This album is described as 330px-Horses_in_the_Sky_album_cover “6 busted ‘waltzes’ for world wars 4 thru 6” … the “first song’s about war and drug addiction, fourth song’s about kanada, and the rest of it is all love songs.”

This album proves to be their folkiest and most organic sounding album.  The songs are mostly pretty mellow, including one that was recorded at a campfire.

“God Bless Our Dead Marines” opens the disc.  It’s 12 minutes long and begins “They put angels in the electric chair, the electric chair.”  The melody is pretty catchy and the accompanying minimal strings accentuate the song nicely.  About 90 seconds into the song, the drums come in and the song takes on a rumbling field.  The vocals are repeated a lot, and Efrim’s voice is placed nicely in the mix.  The middle of song takes on a kind of shanty quality with lots of clapping and a loud electric guitar.  Around 3:30 the song stops and a new melody comes in, primarily on bowed bass.  The sound of this section is spare but very cool.  The piano returns (this is one of the first songs in a while to rely so heavily on piano) and a new melody (including the title of the song) is sung (again, a very catchy folk-song kind of melody) with occasional guitar chords.   The lyrics are also pretty straightforward and poetic.  While in no way suggesting this song could have been popular, it is certainly approachable and fairly conventional (even at 11 minutes).  At 9 minutes the song is stripped of all music except piano.  And several rounds of voices begin singing “when the world is sick, can no one be well, but I dreamt we were all beautiful and strong.”  When the third set of voices (these are bass) come in, it really sounds great.

“Mountains Made of Steam” opens with guitar harmonics and a contrasting simple guitar melody.  The vocals come in about 90 seconds in.  The song is also surprisingly stripped down.  The voices and bass grow a little louder at around 3 minutes, but not in a building and building kind of way.  After a few rounds of “Ya di da di di’s,” the instrumental section swells.  It is loud and soaring but not big the way GYBE is.   The low resounding bowed bass in this song is really fantastic–it’s very big and round and really satisfying

“Horses in the Sky” opens with acoustic guitars and Efrim singing quietly.  It sounds like a very traditional folk song.  There’s a second voice singing harmony (just about everyone is listed as doing vocals).  The lyrics sum up the tone of the song, “Schools look like prisons and our prisons look like malls / Downtown just a sick parade where no one cares at all.”  This is one of the few songs from the band that doesn’t really change over the course of the whole song (some keyboards are added, but it is otherwise pretty much just guitar and voice).

“Teddy Roosevelt’s Guns” starts with echoed guitars and strings and the vocals: “Kanada oh Kanada I ain’t never been your son.”  Strings slowly fill out the melody as more voices start singing that above refrain and Efrim’s indictments mount.  This continues with some swirling strings until about 7 minutes when the drums start pounding out three note blast.  When the vocals come back in, they are the harshest on the album, both from the lead and backing vocals.

“Hang on to Each Other” was recorded “next to a campfire by the river” … “at Garfield’s fire pit.”  You can hear the fire crackling as the song begins.  There’s some simple “ba dum da da dum” vocals before a harmonium grows louder.  Aside from that instrument, it’s otherwise almost entirely a capella with various voices singing different parts, primarily “hang on to each other,” “any fucking thing you love” and “birds toss precious flowers from the murky skies above” in various rounds and harmonies.  It’s really quite a moving song.

“Ring Them Bells (Freedom Has Come and Gone)”  is 13 minutes long.  The song opens with slow strings.  A voice, which follows  a piano melody, sings the “freedom has come and gone” part.  The song feels fuller than the rest of the album with strings and bass filing the background.   The instrumental part is the biggest and most dramatic on the record with swelling strings and occasional guitars ringing out until 4 minutes in when everything drops out except for one violin and a bass and a new vocal melody.  But soon enough a buzzy electric guitar comes in to add more drama to this song.  And then it quiets down again, with staccato guitar and strings getting softer and softer until it fades out entirely for a few seconds.  And then a new guitar line begins.  It is replaced by single piano notes and wild (but quiet) feedback.  Efrim sings over as the feedback builds louder and louder until the screeching end.

This is definitely one of my favorite overall SMtZ albums.  Even if it is quieter and less diverse than other ones, the melodies and song structures are really solid.

The band is back up to seven people for this recording with all of the former players playing but with Scott Levine Gilmore on drums.

  • Thierry Amar – contrabass, glasses, harmonica, voice
  • Becky Foon – cello, voice
  • Ian Ilavsky – guitar, harmonium, voice
  • Scott Levine Gilmore – drums, percussion, guitar, mandolin, voice
  • Efrim Menuck – guitar, piano, voice
  • Jessica Moss – violin, piano, glasses, voice
  • Sophie Trudeau – violin, trumpet, glasses, voice

[READ: May 3, 2016] The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard

Eddie Campbell wrote The Black Diamond Detective Agency which I enjoyed, and The Fate of The Artist, which I enjoyed even more.  Both were pretty unusual–lots of different things going on.  Well, this book has even more stuff going on in it.

I genuinely didn’t know what to expect from this.  I assumed it would be a biography of Jules Léotard, the daredevil acrobat who developed the art of trapeze, popularized the one-piece item that bears his name and was the inspiration for the song “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze.”

But in this book that Jules Léotard dies on page 12.  Upon his deathbed, with no will written, his worldly possession (a fake mustache) is bequeathed to his nephew, Etienne.  So Etienne puts on the mustache and flies to Paris (in a hot air balloon, of course) to join Leotard’s troupe of circus performers.  When he finds out that they have eaten most of the animals because they were starving, his plans change somewhat.

And so this book is all about Etienne pretending to be the (possibly reincarnated) amazing Léotard and the fascinating adventures he gets up to. (more…)

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Robin Sloan–Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore (2012)

Posted in Books about writers, Daredevils, Dungeons & Dragons, Fiona Apple, Fonts, Mystery, Research, Robin Sloan, Scholarship, Technology on January 22, 2013| 1 Comment »

penumbraSOUNDTRACK: FIONA APPLE-The Idler Wheel is Wiser than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords will Serve You More than Ropes Will Ever Do (2012).

fionaFiona Apple released the album with the longest title a few years ago.  The title of this new album (also taken from a verse of Apple’s) doesn’t quite match in terms of length, but the music absolutely delivers in terms of quality.

When the Pawn… was full of big numbers–it was loud and brash and gorgeous.  The Idler Wheel is much more subdued and initially I didn’t think it was as exciting.  But this subdued music draws you in and gets you to really absorb everything that’s going on.  Musically, this album takes notes on the orchestration from her previous album Extraordinary Machine, but it scales  everything back  to what amounts to just Fiona’s voice (often multitracked) and minimal instrumentation.

Like “Every Single Night” which opens with beautiful bells/glockenspiel as Fiona sings.  “Daredevil” is almost all percussion and loud piano.  Indeed, the main sounds of the song is a quick shuffling followed by short piano chords.  It is so stark but her voice just sails through the open space beautifully.

The meandering piano of “Jonathan” is great–at turns minor and sad but then come chords and beauty.  More drums fill “Left Alone” as the opening twenty or so seconds are all drums followed by a menacing piano riff and the amusing lyric, “How can I ask anyone to love me when all I do is beg to be left alone” (and with each subsequent repeating of this chorus she sounds more and more exasperated).

“Periphery” is also mainly percussion.  But in this case, the percussion sounds like feet scraping on gravel–rhythmically of course.  This leads to a great vocal turn by Fiona, one that climaxes in a big roaring almost shouting section.  Speaking of roaring, just listen to the rawness that Fiona reaches on “Regret.”  It is spine tingling.

“Anything We Want” opens with more odd percussion, which I’m led to believe came from Fiona tapping on things on her desk–and it sounds like it–not instruments, but found objects.  Indeed, read the list of instruments that she and her compatriot used on the album: For “Feedy”: Artwork, Celeste, Composer, Dancer, Field Recording, Keyboard Bass, Loops, Percussion, Piano, Primary Artist, Producer, Stomping, Timpani, Vocals and for “Seedy”: Autoharp, Baritone, Bouzouki, Cora, Dancer, Drums, Field Recording, Guitar, Marimba, Percussion, Producer, Stomping.

The final song is just Fiona and tympani as she sings a line about hot knives and melting butter.  Then the piano and second voice (her sister) sings a fugue as the lines repeat over each other.  It’s a crazy, daring song to end an album with and it sounds like nothing else on the radio today.

I have never been disappointed by an album from Fiona.  Each album is different, taking new chances having wilder experimentation   And this one is up there with the best.  It’s easily one of the best records of 2012.

[READ: January 16, 2012] Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore

I saw an ad for this book in The Believer (I believe) and I thought it looked great.  Sarah said she had already put it on hold.  And when it came in from the library, I grabbed it first.

This book is really great.  It’s a story full of intrigue and secret societies  it embraces old books and modern technology; it’s a romance and a puzzle.  And it’s all done in a very comic style.

What is surprising is how different the book is from what I initially expected.  True, I didn’t know anything really about the book before reading it, but the book opens with an overeducated and underemployed guy, Clay, getting a job in the titular bookstore.  But it’s no normal bookstore.  First, it’s open 24 hours a day (that’s 8 hour shifts for three clerks because they really don’t have many customers).  Second, it’s very narrow and very tall–Penumbra has a massive ladder that rolls along all of the shelves and there’s a chapter dedicated to using it properly.  Third, although there are books for sale in the front (an esoteric lot based mostly on Penumbra’s whims), the back section of books (the tall shelves called the Waybacklist) are not for sale–indeed, they are not even real books per se.

There is a small group of local readers (called the Unbroken Spine) who come to the store, give Clay a code, return a book and check out a new one.  Part of Clay’s job is to write down every detail he can about them each time they come in.  But he is not supposed to open any of these wayback books.  Those are really the only rules of the store.

Clay has two roommates, one of whom is Mat, a guy who works for Industrial Light and Magic as a miniaturist (he is building a miniature city in their living room called Matropolis).  He also has an old friend, Neel, with whom he played a Dungeons and Dragons like game called Robots and Warlocks.  Neel has since become a very wealthy programmer (his job is very funny).  Clay and Neel both loved the The Dragon-Song Chronicles, a trilogy of nerdiness by the author Clark Moffat (incidentally, later in the book a character is named Tabitha–this is now the SECOND book in which both of my children’s names are included and both of them are good guys.  Hooray!  So obviously I loved this book).  I love that later in the book, Clay is making an mp3 version of the books because they were only available on cassette!  (I was equally outraged with him).

When Clay’s friends visit the store, they are enchanted by it and can’t believe that he hasn’t looked at any of the books.  So, he does.  He breaks the rule and flips through a book.  But he can’t make much out of it as it has been encoded.

Soon after, a pretty young girl named Kat Potente enters the store (because of a Google ad that he placed trying to get people into the store–she fit every quirky demographic he could dream up).  Kat works for Google, recognizes that Clay is a kindred soul and, in the whirlwind way of people who know what they want, she sets up a date with him.  They hit it off immediately, especially when she sees that he’s working on a program to graph the checkouts of the books that the Unbroken Spine take out.  (Yup, there’s programming in the book–in Ruby).  The graph suddenly starts taking shape and Clay believes that a pattern is slowly emerging.  And when it does, it is like no pattern you have ever seen! (more…)

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Periodical: Outside

Posted in Adventure, Biking, Canoeing, Daredevils, Essays, Fishing, Food, Hunting, Outside, Shooting, Skiing, Surfing, Swimming, Travel, Wells Tower, Yuck! on October 21, 2012| Leave a Comment »

After enjoying yet another article from Outside, I figured it was time to subscribe, you know, give the magazine makers some money for their work.

I decided to wait for three issues to offer a verdict because the first two were really disappointing.  Subscriptions run $2 an issue with a list price of $7.  I haven’t really talked about subscription prices of other magazines before but this one is quite high.  It’s staggeringly high for the amount of ads that are in the magazine, too.  They have a half a dozen advertorials which look like articles (which I hate) and all those personals in the back.  Plus the mag is littered with ads for gear (which I know gear people love but still  it should impact the price of the magazine.  Sheesh).

So the articles I’ve enjoyed in the past were personal stories (from the likes of Wells Tower, etc).  They are extended pieces by reasonably famous authors and they have a great voice.  In the issues I’ve received so far, the feature stories have been the 50 Best Jobs and Are You Tough Enough?  That Jobs one seems like a fun article and indeed the places they chose were interesting.   Although this was more of a fluff piece than a real article–no one is getting a job looking at these companies–certainly not just because they read about it here.  Also, note that none of the companies are East of the Mississippi.  There’s also later article on adventure seeking entrepreneurs.  Yawn.  I gather that the Are You Tough enough type of article is the real meat and potatoes of the magazine, with headlines like “Eat Like a Champion” and “Surfing Monster Waves,” the actual target audience for this magazine must be slim indeed.  I know it’s not me. (more…)

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Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus: Dragons (Sun National Bank Center, Trenton, NJ, May 18, 2012 )

Posted in Acrobats, Adventure, Aga-Boom, Anachronisms, Animals, Big Apple Circus, Consumerism, Daredevils, Nostalgia, Peking Acrobats, Pets, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, Set in New Jersey!, Sun National Bank Center, Supernatural, Trenton, NJ on May 26, 2012| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: May 18, 2012] Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus

The last time I saw Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus was in the mid 70s.  My parents took me two years in a row (and I still have the program books somewhere to prove it).  I didn’t realize that the circus was still around, to be honest.  I knew about all of the other circuses, but RB&B&B (what an awkward name) seemed like maybe it just went away.  Well, that is not the case—apparently once you have kids who are old enough to enjoy it, the circus comes to your town.

Or more specifically, to Trenton.  We thought about going to the show back in March when it was in East Rutherford and Newark but that seemed too far (and pricey).  When it came to Trenton (which was actually further than we anticipated) and I could get tickets for $15/ea, that was all I needed to hear.

If anything was worth $15 it was this circus.  Indeed, the joy we got out of it was worth much more than $15.

If you’ve been following along here, you know we’ve been to a number of circus-type shows over the last few months, so we are jaded circus-goers at this point.  But this show was called Dragons, and that’s hard to pass up, especially if you have a soon to be 7-year-old boy (and you used to play D&D).  When as the show opened and several performers came out with dragons attached to the front of Segways, I knew this was going to be fun.  And that it wasn’t the circus from 1977.

And yet, it kind of was.  Because once the circus proper started, it had all of the elements of circuses of yore:  elephants, tigers, trapeze artists, springboard jumpers, hoops of fire and more.

The theatricality was quite spectacular both old school (the ringmaster and clowns) and new school (remote controlled (I guess) platforms and floating screens to project pictures).  And, yes it was all about Dragons–the ringmaster sang a long over the top song about being a dragon (I think–the sound was really quite poor).  And they explained the four qualities of being a dragon (or maybe the four qualities you needed for the dragon to come out?  That’s what seemed to happen anyhow).  Each of the four qualities (Courage, Strength, Wisdom, Heart) was represented by a color and, tenuously, by the performers in a certain section.

And I cannot keep straight who exemplified which quality so, as my memory allows, here’s what we saw. (more…)

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Colum McCann–“Transatlantic” (New Yorker, April 16, 2012)

Posted in Adventure, Colum McCann, East River Pipe, History, Jack Alcock, New Yorker, Short Story, Teddy Brown, The Mountain Goats, War on April 26, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE MOUNTAIN GOATS-“Drug Life” from Score! 20 Years of Merge Records: The Covers (2009).

 I could tell this was a Mountain Goats song right from the start–it’s lo fi and yet it sounds clear (especially the vocals). Normally with The Mountain Goats you talk about the lyrics, but since he didn’t write the song, there’s not much to say about them (in this paragraph anyhow).

The original, by East River Pipe is also very lo-fi.  It’s a very catchy song and it’s all about drugs: (“If it comes down to the drugs or you…baby we’re through.”).  The original is guitar and keyboards and Cornog’s straightforward singing.  The cover is simply acoustic guitar.  It’s a little faster (and a little shorter) and because I like The Mountain Goats, I prefer the cover.

Although really, they’re not very different.

[READ: April 16, 2012] “Transatlantic”

This story was out of my comfort zone–it’s about army men and airplanes, that’s not my scene, man.  And after reading the first few paragraphs, I wondered if I should keep reading it.  But McCann wrote a compelling story and I’m really glad I finished it.

The story is basically an account of two men, Teddy Brown and Jack Alcock, as they attempt the first transatlantic flight in their modified bomber called The Vickers Vimy.  Anyone with a working knowledge of the flight, or post WWI history knows that these are two real historical people.  I do not have such a working knowledge, so I had no idea that this was based on a true story.  If you know anything about them (and I swear, Google either of them and you will find all the details that you need) then you know how the story turns out.

I didn’t know how the story turned out and I found it thrilling. In part that’s because it’s an exceptionally exciting moment in history–two former army men modify a bomber and try to fly from Newfoundland, Canada to Ireland.  And really, there’s no way it should work–bombers don’t have enough fuel, they have no radar.  It could take days.   Hell the planes don’t even have a windshield that covers them.  But the excitement is also because of the way that McCann tells the story. (more…)

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Arthur Bradford–various nonfictions (1997-2010)

Posted in Adventure, Alessandro Manzoni, Andrew WK, Another Magazine, Arthur Bradford, Avery Corman, Cathleen Schine, Charles Portis, Cheap Trick, Clive James, Daredevils, Dave Eggers, David Rakoff, Elizabeth Gilbert, Essays, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Homelessness, How's Your News?, John Fowles, Luigi Barzini, Maile Meloy, Memoirs, Men's Journal, Miriam Toews, nerve.com, Powder, ReadyMade, Robert James Waller, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Skiing, The Austin Chronicle, The Believer, The New York Times, The Portland Mercury, Travel, Vice, Weezer, Wells Tower on August 14, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: WEEZER-Raditude (2009).

I didn’t buy this Weezer album when it came out because I had heard really bad things about it (like the “guests”), but when I saw it cheap I decided to check it out.  This has to be the most polarizing Weezer album of them all.  I listened to it twice yesterday.  The first time I thought I had been too harsh on it.  The second time I thought it was godawful.  It’s amazing what a couple of hours can do.

It opens with a wonderful bit of poppy wordplay ala Cheap Trick: “(If You’re Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To.”  It’s catchy as anything and is a wonderful start to the album, even if it is probably their poppiest song ever.  From there though, the album really degenerates.  And mostly it’s because it’s so dumb.  I mean the album title should tell you what you’re in for, but who would have expected the moronic sub-pop-metal of “The Girl Got Hot” or even the reprehensible lyrics of “I’m Your Daddy” “You are my baby tonight And I’m your daddy.”  It’s just creepy.  Or gah, a song about the mall?  “In the Mall.”  It’s not even worth mocking.  And really, try to picture Rivers Cuomo in a mall.  Any mall.

But nothing could prepare anyone for “Can’t Stop Partying.”  Unlike Andrew WK’s ouvre, which is so sincere about partying that you can’t take it seriously, this song really seems to be about the guys partying.  It’s laughable.  The anemic rap but Li’l Wayne certainly doesn’t help.

Even the collaboration with Indian musicians on “Love is the Answer” (yes, seriously) doesn’t really work.  It feels like they wrote the song and then said, “Hey let’s throw some sitar on it.”  It’s not enough to be exciting but too much to ignore.

This is not to say that these songs aren’t catchy.  I mean, geez, I still have “Can’t Stop Partying” in my head while I’m listening to something else.   Rivers knows how to write a pop trifle.  And the more he writes songs like this, it makes me thing that Pinkerton was the fluke.  Which is fine. The music world needs poppy songs, right?

[READ: early August 2011] various nonfictions

I thought about doing individual posts for all of Arthur Bradford’s non-fiction that’s available on his website (that’s right,  yet another author that I have read short uncollected pieces by without having read any of his bigger works–I’m looking at you Wells Tower).  Bradford has links to all of his nonfiction ( I assume) on his website.  There are 12 links in total.  One is to his blog (which I’m not reviewing).  The rest are for articles covering a pretty broad array of topics from a pretty broad variety of sources.  (more…)

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