SOUNDTRACK: THE DISMEMBERMENT PLAN-“No One’s Saying Nothing” (2013).
I
thought I knew The Dismemberment Plan, but I must have them confused with someone else, because this song doesn’t sound anything like what a band called The Dismemberment Plan ought to sound like (which is noisy and chaotic and probably death metal). This song has big vocals, organ and piano. Nevertheless, it is rather raucous and is quite fun (and has what sounds like a drill sound effect in the beginning and middle).
Lyrically, the song is odd–“If you press the space bar enough, cocaine comes out. I really like this computer.”
But it has a very fun devil-may-care, throw in everything attitude that I really like it. The entire album was streaming on NPR, and I’m looking forward to hearing more from them–including their back catalog work, to see if they ever sounded like what I thought they sounded like.
[READ: October 1, 2013] One Hundred Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses
I was excited to get this book because I thought the title was quite intriguing (and the crazy way the cover is cut out was also interesting).
There are four “stories” in the book. The first three are about twenty pages each while the fourth is over 100 and is comprised of the titular 100 apocalypses (I didn’t count them).
“Eyes of Dogs”
This story contained marginalia (which is sort of like footnotes but not attached to anything specific). In this story a solider meets a witch and she tells him how to get money—climb down a hole and encounter three dogs. He must wink at the first, blink at the second and hold his eyes closed for the third. The story seems to be going along sensibly like a fairy tale but then it grows introspective and stops. I was disappointed in this one.
“Madmen”
This story was utterly bizarre and yet by the middle of the story the bizarreness was explained and by the end I enjoyed it very much. The premise of this story is that when children grow old they are given a madman to take care of (it is told matter of factly which makes you have to wonder if madman is code for something else. When boys reach a certain age and when girl;s have their first period (which is an unfair division of genders) they get to go to the asylum and pick which madman (or woman) they want to bring home and care for. The bulk of the story is at the asylum with the girl “interviewing” the candidates and her mother being mad at her choices. Ultimately the story turns onto a nice moment between the girl and her dad, who may or may not have married his own madman. As I said very weird, but satisfying.
“Godzilla versus the Smog Monster”
This was the most “real” of the four stories and it was my favorite. A fourteen year old boy is watching “Godzilla vs the Smog Monster.” He found the unlabelled video of it in his father’s sweatshirt drawer and assumed it was porn. He’s bummed that it turns out to be this Godzilla movie. In a parallel story, when the boy goes to school his class is watching live footage of California burning—and this burning is uncontainable. The whole state is slowly engulfed in flames. This fire, which seems to be some kind of attack obviously changes the minds of everyone in the story, including Sara, a girl who Peter thinks is pretty but who never talks to him. But when she crashes her car in front of his house, he helps her and they go for a ride to a cave. Images of the smog monster crop up in interesting ways. Things get weird and less tangible, but because the beginning was so real it made the ending okay.
“A Hundred Apocalypses”
So this selection disappointed me because it proved to be 100 (I assume) flash fiction pieces. And I have more or less come down against flash fiction these days. Especially the kinds of stories that make an interesting “sketch” but aren’t really stories The other problem is that all 100 seemed to be about “apocalypses” which is a useless words when tossed around so much and which loses all meaning when there are 100 that seem to be about actual apocalypses. Or something. I also just learned that apocalypse means un-covering or revelation, not really the end of the world, but whatever.
There were probably 6 out of the hundred that I really enjoyed. Sadly, I didn’t mark them and I don’t remember which ones they were. The rest were okay or worse.
I am ready for flash fiction to go away. And I fear that my beloved McSweeney’s is one of the prime generators of the genre, so perhaps they could knock it off for a bit.
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SOUNDTRACK: BOB ATCHER AND THE DINNING SISTERS-“Christmas Island” (1950).
There is something so charming and wonderful about white people co-opting Hawaiian music in the 50s. I know fully well that there is nothing ‘authentic” about the whole AH-LOH-HA-AY business and that they have made it smooth and “sexy” for “bachelor pads” and all of that. I know that I should be offended on everyone’s behalf. And yet I can’t be.
I Just Read About That... 