Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Funny (strange)’ Category

James Kochalka–Pinky & Stinky (2002)

Posted in Belle and Sebastian, Culture Shock, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Graphic Novel, James Kochalka, Outer Space on September 9, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: BELLE & SEBASTIAN-“Write About Love” (2010).

This single was released on the bands website on September 7th.  The first 20,000 visitors were able to get a free download.  By the time I’d heard about it (3PM) it was long gone.  But the streaming version is still there.

This song continues in that “groovy” vibe that they’ve been indulging in with the last few listens.  It’s far afield from their earlier, more mellow/acoustic sound, and it features some loud organ and solid guitar lines.  Although I really like the early B&S, I’m also quite fond of this later, louder material, and I think it makes for a well-rounded band.

The song is a duet with Carey Mulligan (who I don’t know, but she was in An Education which I haven’t seen).  B&S have always found great melodies for their songs, and this one is no exception. Even with this more rocking sound, they still haven’t lost their sense of songcraft.

I can’t seem to embed the song, so here’s a link: http://www.belleandsebastian.com/newsstory.php?id=515.

[READ: September 7, 2010] Pinky & Stinky

This is the third book that Sarah received for her birthday.  I’m not sure why I put off looking at it until now, but it was worth the wait.

This is a fanciful graphic novel about two pigs who are sent into space.  I’ve always thought that Kochalka’s drawings were simple/sloppy.  But this book shows them to be not at all sloppy, and perhaps deceptively simple.  Because even though the main characters are cute pigs with very few lines, and (once they get to the moon) the moon men are basically hands, the drawings are consistent and are all quite good (hands are definitely not easy to draw).

But on to the plot…. (more…)

Read Full Post »

DC Pierson–The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To (2010) [prepub]

Posted in Adventure, Books about writers, Boredom, Corporate skewering, DC Pierson, Fantasy, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Huh?, Humiliation, Marriage Trouble, Phish, Set at School, Sex, Supernatural, Technology, Virginity (Loss of), YA Books on September 2, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: PHISH-LivePhish 11.14.95 University of Central Florida Arena, Orlando FL (1995).

I have a number of these LivePhish discs.  They are universally solid releases (all from soundboards, I believe, which, have they really been recording all of their shows since like forever?).  And it’s fun to hear Phish totally jam out on a few of their more meandering songs.

One of the most interesting aspects of the series is that they almost always throw in a cover song (on Halloween, they cover an entire album by another band).

I haven’t really mentioned any of these releases because there’s usually not much to say about them: you either like Phish live or you don’t.  But this one is notable for being particularly odd.

They do an a cappella song in the first set–typically if they do an a capella track it is as an encore or the intro of the second set, but this one is right there in the beginning.

The end of the set also had the only instance (of the shows that I have) where Trey explains the audience chess match.  Many of the recordings open up set two with an audience chess move.  In this case, Trey explains that they have been playing chess with the audience at each show.  Phish is white, the audience is black and anyone who wants to just has to go to the Greenpeace booth to play a move…I have no idea how they would choose who gets to play the final decision.

There’s some other odd things in the show. “The Divided Sky” features one of the prettiest solos that Trey plays.  In this show there is a very long pause between the end of the first half of the solo and the beginning of the second.  The crowd cheers quite a bit during the pause, but we the listeners, have no idea what happened.

And then there is the extra long rendition of “Stash.”  It’s broken into three sections.  The first one features a fun audience response guitar solo.  And in this instance, he plays it in a much more staccato style.  The middle one features a bizarre percussion type solo.  And the third features a rendition of “Dog Faced Boy” which is not sung to the appropriate music, rather, the keyboards just play simple, unrelated chords while Trey sings.

Set two ends with a wonderful rendition of “You Enjoy Myself” that ends in their bizarro screaming and grunting.  You’ll get funny looks listening to that loudly.

So this set is a good one, and it stands out as unique among the others for being so darn bizarre.

[READ: June 27, 2010] The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To

I’m always bummed to read a prepub after it gets published.  Sigh.

Sarah told me that I’d love this book and she was correct.  It’s about a misfit high school boy who draws pictures and draws them really well.  Despite this talent, he is not lauded by the cool kids in his class (the kid who draws licensed characters holding joints is lauded by the cool kids).

He’s also kind of defensive about his drawing, because he gets tired of people asking him what he’s drawing.  Especially when they think that he’s just doodling.  But then one day Eric Lederer asks him what he’s drawing.  He and Eric have never talked.  In fact, he doesn’t think anyone talks to Eric.  Eric’s THAT kind of weird.

And what our narrator realizes is especially weird about Eric is that he is standing really really still: “No one stands this awkwardly sure of themselves except characters in my drawings staring straight ahead with their arms at their sides” (8).  And with that awesome detail I fell in love with the book. (more…)

Read Full Post »

John Barth–Lost in the Funhouse: Fiction for Print, Tape, Live Voice (1968)

Posted in Anachronisms, Books about writers, David Foster Wallace, Funny (strange), Gods, Huh?, John Barth, Language, Meta, Postmoderism, Short Story, Therapy?, Unfinished, War on August 19, 2010| 6 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: THERAPY?: Music Through a Cheap Transistor: The BBC Sessions (2007).

I enjoy the title of this disc quite a bit.  Fortunately, I also enjoy the music quite a bit.  This is a collection of BBC recordings from Therapy?

It’s a strange collection in that they recorded songs on five separate occasions and yet there is a lot of duplication of tracks (the liner notes deal with this issue).

John Peel Sessions (and there’s much made in the liner notes about the fact that they thought they’d be meeting Peel himself when they went in, when in fact it was just a random engineer) are essentially live recordings done in the studio.  They tend to be slightly more experimental (done after a band has toured and messed around with the songs some) and for some bands (like Therapy?) they tend to be more raucous.

This collection was recorded from 1991-1995 with a final show in 1998.  Obviously the band isn’t thinking about the future CD release of the sessions when they recorded these sessions, so it probably didn’t seem strange to record “Totally Random Man” 3 times.  But it does seem strange to listen to it like that.

The songs are definitely rawer than the studio versions.  Even their more poppy tracks from 1998 are a bit harsher.  However, their first EPs were really raw, so these songs sound much better (much cleaner).  They also include a lot of fun/weird unreleased tracks and covers.

My only complaint is that neither version of  “Teethgrinder” features that awesome drum sound that is my favorite part of the track.  Otherwise, it’s a great collection.

[READ: June 1, 2010] Lost in the Funhouse

I checked out this book so I could read the title story.  I enjoyed that one quite a bit so I decided to read the whole collection.  The Author’s Note says, “while some of these pieces were composed expressly for print, others were not. For instance: “‘Glossolalia” will make no sense unless heard in live or recorded voices, male and female, or read as if so heard.”  Um, yeah.

The first story: “Frame-Tale” consists entirely of this: “Cut on dotted line, twist end once and fasten AB to ab, CD to cd.” The cut part is a strip of paper that reads: “Once Upon a Time There/Was a Story That Began.”  It’s cute.

The next story, “Night-Sea Journey” is a proper story of a night sea journey. The secret to the story is gradually revealed, and is rather amusing. (more…)

Read Full Post »

Fredy Perlman–[Week 7] Letters of Insurgents (1976)

Posted in Anarchy, Big Books, Canadian Music, Dave Bidini music, Epistolary Novel, Fredy Perlman, Funny (strange), Insurgent Summer, Marriage Trouble, Neurotics, Religion, Rheostatics, Sex, Supernatural, Technology, Violence on July 23, 2010| 2 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: RHEOSTATICS-“Horses” (1991).

I have mentioned the Rheostatics a lot.  I’ve even talked about this song in Melville.  And yet it works so well as a companion to this book.

It starts slowly enough, a simple acoustic guitar with the lyrics:

Word came down and it crashed through my door
From the twenty-first floor
I was thinkin’ about leavin’ early for lunch
When he told me to shut off my press
His face turned green and his white shirt was wet
Like he’d just seen an accident
We threw our masks into a pile, the trucks pulled away for good

The band kicks in a slow beat  as the song builds:

A bus pulled in and I waved at it
Before I knew what it was
We ran in its tracks chasing its tires
But the gates had been riveted shut
I looked for the foreman; his number was empty
Up to Red Deer to stay
We gathered some signs and we sparked up a fire
Gordie got burned on the high-voltage wire

A quick intense bridge:

The first thing she’ll ask me is: “How did it go today?”And I’ll tell her.

The song builds in intensity with some wild screaming guitars until finally settling down to the quiet beginning

I thought there was strength in a union
I thought there was strength in a mob
I thought the company was bluffing
When they threatened to chop us off
Ah, these guns will wilt the winter will seize
And all the bonfires will go out
The company knows when they can afford to be bold
I wish I could, I wish I could, I wish I could

All along the ringing repeated chorus: “Holy mackinaw Joe! (Holy mackinaw).”

I’m not sure if this references a specific event or not.  (Surely someone can tell me that).  But you can listen to it here.  Or, find any of the live renditions on youtube.

There’s an interview with Dave Bidini of the Rheos who tells the interviewer that he also used to do music interviews.  And once he interviewed Neil Peart who, after much chatter, asked Dave if he knew the song “Horses” by the Rheos.  Dave humbly said that he wrote it.  And Neil said that on their last tour he used to come off stage and listen to “Horses” at full blast.  (And that’s how they got Neil to play on the Rheos’ subsequent album).  Neat, huh?

[READ: Week of July 16, 2010] Letters of Insurgents [Sixth Letters]

Insurgent Summer is till moving along, but the insurgents have been quiet lately.  I hope the insanity of these letters and invocations of the devil will bring up the chatter.

Yarostan opens his letter with the most heartfelt emotions.  And yet, anyone who thought (as I did) that there might be some kind of rekindling of romance between the two will be sorely disappointed: (more…)

Read Full Post »

Tom Bissell–“Cinema Crudité: The mysterious appeal of the post-camp cult film” (Harper’s, August 2010)

Posted in David Cross, Entertainment Weekly, Essays, Eurovision, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Harper's, MST3K, Paul Rudd, Safura, Sex, The Room, Tom Bissell, Yuck! on July 22, 2010| 3 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: SAFURA-“Drip Drop” (2010)

Azerbaijan came in 5th in this year’s Eurovision contest.  And they did it with this monstrosity of a song by Safura.  She sounds like so many pop chanteuses, pulling out all the stops on high notes, vibrato and even a fascinatingly accented English.

But just as I’m about to dismiss this song out of hand, she throws in this weird chorus of pizzicato “drip drops.”  Even they are not very compelling, but the juxtaposition of these two parts of the song are surprising enough to make the song interesting.

But I think that’s enough Eurovision for me.  And I didn’t even make it to the song by Latvia with the lines: “I’ve asked my Uncle Joe/But he can’t speak/Why does the wind still blow?/And blood still leaks?/So many questions now/With no reply/What for do people live until they die?/  Only Mr God knows why/But his phone today is out of range”

[READ: July 19, 2010] “Cinema Crudité”

This article is about cult films, although it focuses a lot on a film that I’ll never watch called The Room.  I had heard about the film in Entertainment Weekly a month or so ago.  They joked about its status as a midnight film that all manner of celebrities swear by: David Cross, Paul Rudd, Jonah Hill etc.

This article goes into much greater depth than the EW piece did about what the film is actually like.  The author really points out all of its flaws and incongruities and everything else about the film that is awful.  And then he says that he’s watched it at least 20 times and couldn’t wait to interview the auteur behind it.

The article is great, by the way, Bissell did an excellent job. But I still don’t want to watch the film. (more…)

Read Full Post »

Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum–“The Erlking” (New Yorker, July 5, 2010)

Posted in 20 Under 40, Eurovision, Fables, Fantasy, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), New Yorker, Paula Seling and Ovi, Sarah Shun-lein Bynum, Short Story, Supernatural, Toilets on July 20, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: PAULA SELING & OVI-“Playing with Fire” (2010).

Now this is what I think of as a Eurovision song.  It’s Romania’s entry and it came in third!  The video is a live version (I assume).  And it is deliciously over the top right from the start.  Paula & Ovi face each other while the backing singers punctuate all of the lyrics.

Even the opening beat feels very Euro to me (whatever that means).  But when they start singing at each other, “Girl Girl Girl…” “Boy boy boy…” and they get to the chorus about burning the place down, the theatricality hits its peak.  I really don’t like this song, and yet after listening to it three times for this review, I find it maddeningly infectious.  Just like Eurovision.

And I would be remiss for not acknowledging the outrageous high not she hits in the middle.  I don’t think it’s particularly effective in the song, but it is impressive.

[READ: July 17, 2010] “The Erlking”

This was a fascinating story that went in two very different directions (and which feels like it’s part of a longer story).

There are two characters in the story Ondine–a young girl who only answers to “Ruthie”– and Kate, her mom. As the story opens, Ruthie’s mom is dragging her to the Elves’ Faire at the local Waldorf school.  Her mom feels bad that she never even considered sending Ruthie to the school (they had tried with the Jewish Montessori school, but were not accepted).  SHe had heard a story about a nine year old who knew the entire Mongol empire but still sucked his fingers.  She gets the awesome line: “Everybody has to go into a 7-Eleven at some point in life, operate in the ordinary universe.”

She figures that she can introduce Ruthie to some fun and imaginative things by bringing her here.  As the story continues, we learn a lot about Ruthie’s mother’s concerns and fears of inadequacy (some are common and relatable, some are over the top, and others are pretty unusual).

(more…)

Read Full Post »

Donald Barthelme–“Kierkegaard Unfair to Schlegel” (New Yorker, October 12, 1968)

Posted in Bison B.C., Canadian Music, Donald Barthelme, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Huh?, Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, New Yorker, Søren Kierkegaard, Soren Kierkegaard on July 15, 2010| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: BISON B.C.-“Two Days Booze” (2010).

Bison B.C. are a hardcore metal band from Vancouver.  I was surprised to hear them on CBC Radio 3, but that’s one of the great things about the online radio station: the diversity is amazing!

Bison B.C. is heavy with growling vocals that I didn’t understand at all.  In between bombastic notes, they had include some guitar riffs that broke the bombast.  The biggest surprise comes at around the 4 minute mark (quite a long song for the genre, although it seems that all of their songs are at least 5 minutes) when the song slows down to a few single notes (and a quiet bass). That’s when the choir (?) of male voices sings an Oh, oh section.

I listened to a few songs from their earlier discs, and it seems that they are going in a far darker direction with this new one.

[READ: June 30, 2010] “Kierkegaard Unfair to Schlegel”

Before I start let me say that this article was my first chance to plumb the depths fo the New Yorker online (subscriber back issues services) and it’s really awesome.  I printed out some great looking ads from the fifties and sixties!  I also enjoyed looking at the very first issues of the magazine.

This short story article was bandied about among David Foster Wallace fans as being a pioneer for Brief Interviews and other DFW stylings.

It opens with an answer to a question, which appears to be a therapy session. And it’s quite funny.  But from there, the story gets broken down into several sections. Each one is more Q&A (except the 4th one which is just a series of Qs. (more…)

Read Full Post »

Zsuzsi Gartner–”Say the Names (after Al Purdy)” (The Walrus July/August 2010)

Posted in Books about music, Books about writers, Canadian Content, Canadian Music, CBC Radio 3, Funny (strange), Gord Downie, Gordon Lightfoot, Rush, The Tragically Hip, The Walrus, Young Rival, Zsuzsi Gartner on June 22, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: YOUNG RIVAL-“Got What You Need” (2009).

I was only able to hear this song once.  It’s surprisingly on available on the Young Rival playlist on CBC Radio 3).  Young Rival play a kind of fast, noisy punk and yet the melodies underneath the noise are very poppy.

I also played the track “Authentic” which is similar in style.  I found both songs very catchy, but have to admit that even a few minutes later I couldn’t recall them at all.  I’d say it’s perfect  for radio airplay.

[READ: June 14, 2010] “Say the Names”

This, indeed, is the quintessential Canadian story.  Every line in the piece is taken from a Canadian song, book or movie.  (I only learned that from the introduction to all of the stories. There’s nothing in the story to reveal that.  Although given its fractured nature and the very obviousness of some of the titles, it wouldn’t be too hard to figure out.]

It’s kind of fun to play “spot the lyrics” or what have you.  I knew some, but far fewer than I would have guessed.

As for the story itself, well, it’s a little disjointed. (more…)

Read Full Post »

Guy Billout–Something’s Not Quite Right (2004)

Posted in Art, Children's Books, Corporate skewering, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Guy Billout, The Beatles on June 1, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: BEATLES-Rubber Soul (1965).

After the breakthrough of Help!, the Beatles followed up with their first proper album that is full of all original songs and which really pushes the envelope.

The opening song, “Drive My Car” opens the disc with a unique sound and style.  And yet, lyrically, “Baby you can drive my car, and baby I love you,” is as lame as The Doors, “Hello, I love you won’t you tell me your name?” in terms of dealing with the opposite sex.

But with “Norwegian Wood” things really get interesting.  It introduces the sitar–the first inclination towards their flirtation with Eastern/Indian influences.  And I can’t help but think it must have been rather shocking in a rock song in 1965.  It also features “Nowhere Man,” a song featured in the Yellow Submarine movie.  The song is a standout, from the harmonies to the language play.

I suppose everyone knows a person named Michelle who hates the song “Michelle.”

They really mix up the styles on  this disc (while always sounding like The Beatles). “What Goes On” is a sort of country tinged rocker, while “Girl” feels sort of tin pan alley ish, (the big sighs during the chorus are a bit excessive, but work within the song).

The disc ends with the really distrubing, murderous boyfriend lyrics of “Run for Your Life.”  I’m not sure what inspired this song, but frankly it’s lyrics are really dreadful. It’s not the first “I’ll kill you if you date someone else” song and it’s certainly not the last, but it mars an otherwise really catchy song.

Amazingly, all of the songs still clock in under 3 minutes, except “You Won’t See Me”.  While Rubber Soul is probably their first fully realized disc, it’s not until the next album (just a few months down the line) that they blow the lid of the joint.

[READ: May 28, 2010] Something’s Not Quite Right

This book almost doesn’t count a there are virtually no words (one per page). But the book is so awesome that it has to be included just because.

Something’s Not Quite Right is 32 pages of oversized pictures in which, yes, something is not quite right.  Note the cover illustration for an idea.

So, each page features a brilliantly rendered piece of art.  There’s a caption for each picture which reflects (often humorously) on the picture.  The book is a children’s book (Clark enjoyed the nonsense very much).  But even adults will say, Whoa, cool, when they look at these pictures that are just…wrong. (more…)

Read Full Post »

Herman Melville–Moby-Dick [Week 2] (1851)

Posted in Adventure, Art, Bible, Big Books, Death, Demons, Fishing, Funny (strange), Grateful Dead, Herman Melville, Huh?, Infinite Zombies, Moby Grape, Racism, Religion, Whales on May 31, 2010| 5 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: MOBY GRAPE-Moby Grape (1967).

Moby Grape is one of those bands that I’ve always heard of but had never heard.  I know, their debut is 43 years old and yet I’d never heard it.  Well, thanks to the internet (lala.com, RIP as of today), I was able to listen to what I assumed was their Greatest Hits.  If only I had done a modicum of research.  The disc I chose was Legendary Grape, which it turns out is not a greatest hits at all, but is actually some weird pesudo-Moby Grape record released in 1989 under a different band name due to legal protractions, but then reissued as Moby Grape.  It was rather uninspired and nothing at all what I thought it would sound like.  Nothing dreadful, just nothing worth thinking that this band “legendary.”

So, with a little research, I learned that their first album is what I should have been checking out.  Moby Grape is the eponymous release and it sounds much more like what I assumed this psychedelic era-band would sound like.  This disc is pretty much in keeping with what a band that produced an album cover like this would sound like.

It’s sort of a folksy Grateful Deadish sound.  But they move beyond a simple genre with a host of writers and instrumentalists contributing their own thing, man.  So there’s a few rocking numbers, a few ballads, and a bunch of other fun things. To me the most notable thing is that in a time when trippy psychedelic songs were long events, Moby Grape played mostly short songs (the longest one is the final track at 4 minutes, but most are around 2 minutes long).

I think I may be too far removed from this scene to really appreciate the disc.  I like what I hear, and a second listen made it even more enjoyable, but I can’t imagine investing a lot of  time with the band.

[READ: Week of May 31, 2010] Moby-Dick [Chapters 19-41]

Plug #1:
In case you didn’t see it on Infinite Zombies, Daryl has created what he calls Moby-Diction, which allows you to search the text for any word and see where and how often it occurs.  Geek heaven!

Plug # 2:
A visual treat is found at Matt Kish’s monumental: One Drawing for Every Page of Moby-Dick, which is pretty well explained by its title.  It is an amazing site (sight) to behold.

Now, back to our story.

Week 2 of the Moby-Dick read is amusing because it continues a minor thread that has been going on for some 100 pages (of my edition): When are we going to meet Captain Ahab?  We hear a lot about him, including a portent of doom from Elijah, but he doesn’t appear until Chapter 28.

Elijah, meanwhile, appears on the Nantucket streets.  He reveals himself to Ishmael and Queequeg as a sort of homeless man who asks them if they’re sailing with Ahab.  When they say yes, of course, he warns them about some bad things that happened to Ahab and his leg and future portents of doom.  Ishmael is a bit freaked by the guy, especially when Elijah seems to be following them, but he tries to out the madman out of his mind. (more…)

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »