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Archive for the ‘Sex’ Category

Jonathan Lethem–“The Porn Critic” (New Yorker, April 9, 2012)

Posted in Humiliation, Jonathan Lethem, Neutral Milk Hotel, New Yorker, Pornography, Sex, Short Story, The Apples in Stereo on April 11, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE APPLES IN STEREO-King of Carrot Flowers, Pt. 3 from Score! 20 Years of Merge Records: The Covers (2009).

The Apples in Stereo have made the first song on this covers disc in which I categorically like the original better.  I don’t know that much about the Apples in Stereo, although I know they are tangentially related to Neutral Milk Hotel.  But I don’t know if their style is in general like this version–keyboardy and simplistic, or if this is a goof project for them.

Of course, the original of this song, by Neutral Milk Hotel is an indie classic, so you’d be hard pressed to try to do a respectful version and make it sound better.  It’s nice they did something different, I just don’t like it as much.

[READ: April 6, 2012] “The Porn Critic”

This is a story that is superficially facile–it confirms the age-old belief that women just do not like porn.  And yet there’s some interesting dynamics at work that I found really enjoyable.

The story is about Kromer.  Kromer was believed to be a hedonistic satyr–that a life of partying, drugs and sex followed him wherever he went.  But that was not exactly true–he was around a lot of it, just never in the middle of it.  The debauchery in his life was all thanks to his friend Greta.

Greta has a trust fund that will not mature until she reaches 30.  She was so outraged at not having the trust fund that (and I love this phrasing) it “drove her mad with the determination to die squalorously before she became wealthy.”  Despite her lack of access to the fund, she did have at her disposal  her father’s “man.”  He would cater to her every whim at any hour of the day.

And so she lived the hedonistic lifestyle–drugs and drinking, closing out parties and hanging with wild transsexuals (and calling for deliveries from delis across town to the bar she was currently in).  And she also hung out with Kromer–who was terrified of her debauched friends, but loved the access to her father’s servant.

Kromer’s reputation was also helped because he worked in a porn shop called Sex Machines.  He worked for a local real estate maven who owned all kinds of stores–from coffee to video to adult marital aids.  I love the details of Sex Machines, and that its “interior and stock had been painstakingly derived from that of a famous San Francisco shop, founded by a sex-positive lesbian collective. In lieu of such a collective, the owner had installed Kromer,”  So instead of Toys in Babeland Manhattan got Sex Machine.

Sex Machine also published a newsletter which included reviews of the latest porn movies.  And Kromer was the sole reviewer–he watches dozens of films (the output is tremendous!) and tried to simplify their content for the clientele.

As a result, he had tons of porn movies lying around his house.  And as a result of that, very few people, women especially, had visited his apartment. (more…)

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Thomas Pynchon–[Week 7] Gravity’s Rainbow [Sections 3.11-3.15] (1973)

Posted in Africa, Big Books, Consumerism, Corporate skewering, Drinking, Drugs, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Language, Military, Political Humor, Pranks, Racism, Research, Rocket 00000, Russia, Sex, Supernatural, Surreal, Technology, Thomas Pynchon, Threats, Travel, War on April 9, 2012| 3 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: ROCKET 00000-What Women Want (2010).

This is the second band that I have discovered because of this novel.  I was looking for images to paste in last week’s post for Rocket 00000, and I came across this EP.

Rocket 00000 are a trio from Cincinnati and this is their first (and only) release.   It’s got a kind of 80s punk vibe–I can’t really make out the words, but I like the feel.

There’s something very raw and almost amateurish about the record–but that seems deliberate, because the album sounds very professional–it’s recorded well and the band is very tight.  And since I like the bandcamp site quite alot, I’m going to provide the link with extras here so you can listen to the album, too.

There’s four songs–two are 5 minutes and two are around 3 minutes.  The two longer ones have intros and outros that extend the music to those long (for punk songs) times.  And I really like these instrumental sections. In fact, when I first listened, I thought maybe the whole first track was an instrumental.  Since  I liked the tone of the album I was okay with that.

The “Summer City” part of “Summer City/Conspiracy Theory” has a simple but effective guitar solo as an instrumental.  After about a minute and a half “Conspiracy Theory” kicks in, the vocals bring a new texture and a punk element into the song.  “Lethal Weapon 2 & 4” has a great title, but it doesn’t sound all that different from the other songs (although the lyrics, “We’re not perfect…but neither are you” are pretty clear).

“Signs” has some cool drum breaks and fills, and the end of the song is musically interesting.    “Braveheart: Forever Young” probably combines the music and vocals  best–I like the  upbeat music with the dark words.  The song ends with about 2 and a half minutes of instrumental (with interesting feedback) that works really well together.

It’s not the best punk EP, but it’s got some good qualities and the band has a good name.  I wonder how they “say” it?

[READ: Week of April 2] Gravity’s Rainbow 3.11-3.15

After last week’s breezy read, I figured that this week’s would be a bit rougher.  But for the most part, it wasn’t–aside from the very end which was a little hard to stomach.  There was a lot of technical discussion in this section–which was a  bit hard to comprehend.  There was a also a return of Franz Pökler–where we learned his story and what happened to him.  We assumed that he was killed by a police truncheon, but that turns out to be untrue.  His story is pretty dark and sad.  Sorry, as Marco points out below, it was Peter Sachsa who was killed by truncheon.  My conspiracy has been called out!

Section 3.11 opens uncomfortably with Franz Pökler… copulating with Leni in an aggressive and rough manner.  He has just come back from showing of Alpdrücken and imagines that it’s Margherita underneath him.  He assumes that men all over the country are doing the same thing because of the movie.  He calculates that it was that night that Ilse was conceived–they’d barely had sex around that time.  This flashback brings us forward to the scene of Franz waiting for Ilse to return to Zwölfkinder—a kind of children’s fantasy playground which would prove to be a very significant location for them. (more…)

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Thomas Pynchon–[Week 6] Gravity’s Rainbow [Sections 3.6-3.10] (1973)

Posted in Africa, Big Books, Consumerism, Corporate skewering, Drinking, Drugs, Frank Zappa, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), James Joyce, Language, Military, Political Humor, Pranks, Racism, Research, Russia, Sex, Supernatural, Surreal, Technology, Thomas Pynchon, Threats, Travel, War on April 2, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: FRANK ZAPPA-Civilization Phaze III (1994).

There were a number of choices for soundtracks for this week’s read.  I could have chosen the Andrew Sisters (and their wonderful “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree”) who get a mention in the book.  And, of course, I could have chosen Elton John’s “Rocket Man.”  But, when I read Trudi tell Magda about her boyfriend Gustav who wants to live inside a piano, well, it was hard not to think of this, Frank Zappa’s final work.

Civilization Phaze III is an opera-pantomime.  According to the libretto, “The speaking characters all wear oversized masks, gloves and shoes.  They live in an abstracted grand piano….”  And musically opens with this introductory spoken passage:

FZ: The audience sits inside of a big piano and they listen to it grow.
Spider: People are going to sit inside of a piano. They’re going to listen to this piano grow.
John: They’re going to listen to the piano grow?

Civilization Phaze III was released posthumously in 1994.  But here’s the weird thing.  Most of the sessions of “piano people” dialogue were recorded in 1967.  Zappa had a bunch of people come into the studio, sit under a piano that was miked and improvise dialogue (sounds like the 60s to me).  He released some of this dialogue on his  late 60s albums, but as far as I can tell, the parts about the piano were never included (in Lumpy Gravy someone talks about wanting to live in a drum).  I’m also not sure how well-known the “piano sessions” were at the time.

So, here’s the question…did Zappa influence Pynchon or did these two people come up with the same idea at roughly  the same time.  The reason Zappa put off using the material recorded in 1966 was because technologies were simply not advanced enough to let him manipulate the dialogue so it would sound decent, much less coherent.  So Civilization Phaze III became his exploration of the past with contemporary technology.

He also recorded new spoken dialogue in 1991 and merged the two.  It’s an interesting idea, but I fear that the new dialogue absolutely misses the vibe of the earlier dialogue.  In the early dialogue, they all sounds like they’re stoned and are talking crazy nonsense about horses, smoke and music.  The later dialogue is much more abrasive (especially Michael Rappaport, the only person who has since gone on to renown).  At the time, Rappaport had been on one TV show as a guest, but by now he is too famous for this.  I find him a distraction (not Zappa’s fault obviously), even more so because he talks as if he is black (he says “Nobody said nothin’ when y’all bought my people, right?”) while he is demonstrably not.  And then ruins it contextually by mentioning Yo MTV Raps, the only thing that places the story in time.  It’s weird that Frank wouldn’t have a black person say these lines, especially since he has so many other races and nationalities represented in his music.  But maybe that’s me intellectualizing that I just don’t like Rappaport.

So, what’s this monstrosity about?  I have no idea.  Improvised stoner dialogue from the 60s is pieced together into a kind of story.  Occasionally Frank’s voice chimes in and prompts them to talk about certain things (which is quite  disorienting).  And the whole “plot” well, I’m not even sure if it can be called a plot, but Frank tries to cobble something together–again, the 1991 dialogue seems to be more pointed, more about conflict, possibly something about overcrowding and racism, and there’s certainly some social criticism at work, but as for a story, well, not so much.

The music, on the other hand, is the culmination of Zappa’s more experimental, atonal “classical” music.  Most of the first disc is performed on the synclavier while most of the second disc contains more actual musicians.  The music is difficult and not to everyone’s tastes, for sure.

Atonal music is far more intellectual than visceral, so it’s hard to “enjoy” this music.   Zappa obviously knew how to write catchy poppy friendly music, so this is a deliberate attempt to write something more challenging.  I like Zappa’s crazy music in small dozes, so listening to this entire thing (over 2 hours) can be a tough in one sitting.  But each piece (especially the two really long pieces “N-Lite” (18 minutes) and “Beat the Reaper” (15 minutes) ) showcases something interesting or satisfying.

The libretto that Zappa includes with the discs explains the story in far more detail and shape than one would ever get from listening to the music.  Without the book, you would know that this is a dark and moody piece, but with the book, you can actually see what the music is showing.  That may be a flaw, or that may be the way of a staged performance.  I have no idea if it was ever staged.

There are certainly easier introductions to Zappa’s music.

[READ: Week of March 26] Gravity’s Rainbow 3.6-3.10

Last week was a bear of a read for me, but this week was so fast (and short) that I just kept going because I was so into the Slothrop story (I won’t go past the spoiler line, I promise).  And yes, it’s (almost) all Slothrop this week.

Section 3.6 begins with Slothrop violently ill.  [I admit I don’t think of novel characters as getting ill very much–unless it’s a plot point–but surely characters get colds and tummy aches just like everyone else, right?].  He drank out of an ornamental pond in the Tiergarten–but, duh, everyone knows to boil water before drinking these days.  This also introduces Slothrop as Rocketman, something we won’t get more details on until later. (more…)

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Thomas Pynchon–[Week 5] Gravity’s Rainbow [Sections 3.1-3.5] (1973)

Posted in Africa, Big Books, Consumerism, Corporate skewering, David Foster Wallace, Drinking, Drugs, Frank Zappa, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), James Joyce, Language, Mark Twain, Military, Political Humor, Pranks, Racism, Research, Russia, Sex, Supernatural, Surreal, Technology, Thomas Pynchon, Threats, Travel, War on March 26, 2012| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: FRANK ZAPPA AND THE MOTHERS OF INVENTION-Over-nite Sensation (1973).

When I saw Marvy’s Mothers, it was hard not to pass up the connection to Zappa and his band.  But oh, what album to pick?  (He released like 40). I chose the one released in the same year as Gravity’s Rainbow.

It also happens to be full of all kinds of sex (imagine that).

It opens with “Camarillo Brillo” the kind of simple, catchy song that Zappa seems to whip out very easily.  I assumed that the title was some kind of sexual slang (not a bad assumption), but Wikipedia suggests it has something to do with an insane asylum (Camarillo) and the crazy hair they often had, which makes sense given the crazy lyrics.  It starts kind of trippy with inscrutable lyrics.  And then the bridge, “she was breeding a dwarf” is pretty insane.  It also features a very funny sequence that was oft-quoted in MST3K–“Is that a real poncho or a Sears poncho.”

“I Am the Slime” is a funky (a great Zappa riff) diatribe against TV (because it makes you buy crap you don’t need and makes you listen to the government).  “Dirty Love” is a perverse song with lots of guitar solos.  There’s some kind of bestiality in this song (which also ties in with parts of this section).

“Fifty-Fifty” features the vocals of Ricky Lancelotti (in a screaming style that would later be used a lot by Terry Bozzio).  It’s about an ugly guy who is crazy enough to sing to us.  The songs seem to be more about solos though, as there’s a keyboard solo an electric violin solo (from Jean-Luc Ponty) and some crazy guitar solos.

I don’t know what “Zomby Woof” is about, but it has some wicked guitar soloing and horns playing Zappa’s staccato riffs up and down the scale.

“Dinah-Moe Humm” is a song perfectly suited to this book–it’s a song in which a woman bets the narrator that he can’t make her have an orgasm.  The melody is twinkly and silly.  It’s shockingly explicit. But it’s even funnier to know that the backing vocals are supplied by The Ikettes (Ike and Tina were recording in the next room).  They got paid almost nothing and when Ike heard the song he called it “shit” and asked that their name be removed from the credits.

It also plays around with hippy slang.  “Kiss my aura Dora/It’s real angora/Would you all like some more-a/right here on the floor-a/and how about you fauna/You wanna?”

He also starts talking about Zircon encrusted tweezers, which come back in “Montana.”  “Montana” is about moving to Montana to raise dental floss (really).  It features some wonderful fast pizzicato notes that are more or less Zappa’s signature.  The middle section is  hugely difficult and very impressive for the backing vocalists (Tina apparently was really impressed that one of her girls could do it).

Zappa packs a lot of music into 35 minutes, and this album seems to be a turning point in his desire to cram sex and craziness into his commercial music.  Just about every song on this disc was played a lot live and this album has become something of a classic.

[READ: Week of March 19] Gravity’s Rainbow [3.1-3.5]

This week’s read has been the most challenging for me so far.  I enjoyed Section 2 very much.  The Slothrop scenes were funny and wild and even advanced the plot.  I never expected that Section 3 would introduce a ton of new characters, more or less ignore the old charterers and stay with these new characters so that by not paying close attention to them in the beginning I was just confused by the end.

I do admit that while skimming again for this post, I was able to focus on the new characters more and found it far less confusing.  It’s just that on a first read, suddenly there’s this whole new sequence of people and their histories to deal with!  Wow.

It was especially surprising because Section 3 begins with Slothrop (so it’s not like in 2666 where a new section means a new cast).  But he meets new characters and then we flash all the way back through each person’s life.  And yes, it was quite interesting once I actually paid attention, and the connections were pretty awesome.  But it was still pretty surprising on the first read through.

Section 3 is called In the Zone.  And the Zone is mentioned quite a lot, although I never figured out where it is meant to be exactly. (more…)

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Jeffrey Eugenides–The Marriage Plot (2011)

Posted in Culture Shock, Drinking, Drugs, Edith Wharton, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jonathan Franzen, Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, Religion, Research, Sex, Thomas Pynchon, Ulver, XTC on March 20, 2012| 3 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: ULVER-Shadows of the Sun (2007).

I really wanted to like this album because of the cover–which is striking.  I know, I know, never judge…  My initial reaction to the disc was kind of poor.  I’ve followed Ulver’s progress through their many incarnations, and it’s not entirely surprising that they should make an entirely ambient record.  It just strikes me as an odd release–mellow and almost lullaby-ish but also a little creepy (the voice mostly).

But at the same time, musically it’s quite pretty.  And while it wasn’t a very good listen for a car trip to work, it was actually really perfect for listening to at work–where headphones allowed for hearing so many nuances.

There’s not much point in a song by song listing, as the songs are similar–washes of music with slightly distorted, deep vocals.   But there are some interesting musical choices that make each song unique, and consequently better than a lot of ambient in which all of the songs use the same musical palette.  “All the Love” employs piano and come cool electronic sounds near the end.

“Let the Children Go” is a much darker song (with drums!).  “Solitude” is the most melodic song of the bunch.  It reminds me of Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” (which should tell you something about the overall tone of the album).  It has a noticeable vocal line (and really audible lyrics, which are quite melancholy and more emotional that I would have expected: “You just left when I begged you to stay.  I’ve not stopped crying since you went away.”

Another observation.  At times when he actually sings, the vocals sound a bit like XTC–“Shadows of the Sun” in particular.  And since that song has pianos it’s not inconceivable that this could sound like XTC (although not really).

With the right atmosphere, this record proves to be a very impressive listen.  Kristoffer Rygg’s vocals really suit the mood and, all in all, it does reflect the album cover rather more than I initially thought.

[READ: March 18, 2012] The Marriage Plot

I had put this book on hold a few months ago.  And I was ninety-something on the list, so I didn’t think too much about it.  I looked the other day and I was 10.  Yipes.  How was I going to read this 400 page book  in three weeks while also reading Gravity’s Rainbow??

Well, amazingly, The Marriage Plot worked as a nice foil to GR. It is a supremely easy read.  It is completely uncomplicated.  And, it actually has some unexpected parallels to GR–specifically, two of the characters travel to Europe, one on a pilgrimage the other on a honeymoon, and they travel to Paris, Geneva, Spain, Zürich, and even Nice.  There is literally no connection between these two books (although Mitchell does bring Pynchon’s V along with him), but it was fun to see new people go to the cities that Slothrop has been traveling to for very different reasons.

I powered through the book, reading large chunks and staying up way too late both because I liked the book and because I wanted to get it back on time (beware the library police!).  And there really is something about finishing a book quickly, it really keeps the story and characters fresh and makes the experience more enjoyable.

But on to the book.

This book centers around three people in a kind of lover’s triangle.  The woman at the center is Madeleine (and yes there are wonderful tie-ins to Madeline the children’s book series). The two men are Leonard and Mitchell.  All three of them are graduating from Brown in the mid 80s.

I identified with the book immediately because Madeleine is an English major (as was I).  She studies the Victorian era [and I had just read the piece by Franzen about Edith Wharton] and is on track to write her thesis on this era.  The title of the book comes from this section–novels written at that time were especially focused on marriage–if a woman did not marry, she was more or less doomed, and so the plots centered around her quest to find a suitable mate.  As Franzen noted in the above article, Wharton and some of her predecessors sounded the death knell for the “marriage plot” and Madeleine was going to do her thesis on that.

As the pieces of the triangle fall into place we learn (skeletal at first with much detail added later) that Madeleine and Mitchell were very good friends initially.  So good, in fact, that she invited him back to her parents house for a vacation.  He was head over heels in love with; however, out of fear (mostly) he never acted on the opportunities she gave him, and she thought that he wasn’t interested in anything more than friendship.  Basically, he blew it (although he doesn’t learn this until much later–I can relate to this all too well). As the story opens, she has just woken up, hungover, smelling of a party, with a mysterious stain on her dress.  She knows she did something with someone last night but she’s not sure what.  Not atypical college behavior.  But the kicker is that it is graduation morning and her parents are ringing the doorbell of her dorm right now. (more…)

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Thomas Pynchon–[Week 4] Gravity’s Rainbow [Sections 2.4-2.8] (1973)

Posted in Anarchy, Bugs Eat Books, James Joyce, Lewis Carroll, Military, Political Humor, Racism, Research, Russia, Sex, Supernatural, Surreal, The Dead Milkmen, Thomas Pynchon, War on March 19, 2012| 2 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: BUGS EAT BOOKS-“Imipolex G” (2004).

I had a CD planned for this week, but when I searched for Imipolex G online to see if it was real or based on anything, I can across this song by a band I’ve never heard of.  How could I pass it up (at least it wasn’t a song about coprophagia).

I listened to the whole album (only once, so this isn’t a fair criticism) and it’s all in a similar vein–lo-fi sounding.  Like maybe it was recorded on a two-track. The vocals are slightly whiny–not bad whiny–90s indie rock whiny.

And I see that Joe Jack Talcum from the Dead Milkmen has a solo album on the same label, so that makes sense.  I probably would have lived this album back in college.  And I would have wondered what Imipolex G was and then I would have found out about Gravity’s Rainbow and tried to read it.  And given up.

So this song is just over three minutes and opens with feedback squalls, but that noise is undermined by the jangly guitar that takes over the song. It’s quite catchy (in a noisy indie rock kind of way that almost dares you to think it’s catchy.

I’ve tried to determine any lyrics I could “plans etched on the wall… target for my head…I’ve got to go away.”

I’ve embedded the song below, although clicking on the button will take you to their My Space page, rather than playing it directly.

Imipolex G

The album appears to still be available (original pressings came with a bug).

[READ: Week of March 12] Gravity’s Rainbow 2.4-2.8

This was a conveniently short read this week (I had a lot going on, so those 30 fewer pages were a nice breather).  Section 2 continued mostly with Slothrop, although it was also an extrapolation of the people who were impacted by him in the beginning of the section.

For those with weak stomachs, we saw what I have to assume is the most disgusting section of the book.  And there was also a reverie (and the use of the word reverie) that had me a little confused. (more…)

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The Wolf Knife (2010)

Posted in Deb Olin Unferth, Laurel Nakadate, Sex, The Wolf Knife, Yuck! on March 17, 2012| Leave a Comment »

[WATCHED: March 15, 2012] The Wolf Knife

Ever since the advent of Wholphin, McSweeney’s short film DVD series, The Believer’s annual Film Issue has included films that do not belong on Wholphin–typically longer films, which is a cool way to see things you normally wouldn’t.   This year’s issue includes a feature-length film by Laurel Nakadate, The Wolf Knife.

Readers of this blog know that I love the McSweeney’s empire.  I read McSweeeney’s and The Believer, Grantland and Lucky Peach.  They’ve gotten me to enjoy things I never thought I would.  I also really love Wholphin–the films are weird and cool and unexpected.

So you can imagine how disappointed I was to be so disappointed by The Wolf Knife.  The introduction to the film in the magazine is by Deb Olin Unferth.  She made it sound amazing (even though she admits that people did walk out during the first fifteen minutes in some screenings).  And yet, after going through what some critics have said she concludes: “to some [seeing the film] might sound like the best possible use of ninety minutes of their lives.”

Oh how wrong this was. (more…)

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Thomas Pynchon–[Week 3] Gravity’s Rainbow [Sections 1.19-2.3] (1973)

Posted in A Fish Called Wanda, Adam and the Ants, Army of Lovers, Beavis and Butthead, David Foster Wallace, Duran Duran, James Joyce, Military, Political Humor, Racism, Research, Rockwell Knuckles, Russia, Sex, Supernatural, Surreal, Thomas Pynchon, Twin Peaks, War on March 12, 2012| 3 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: ARMY OF LOVERS-Massive Luxury Overdose (1991).

The only way that I, and I suspect any American, knows this band is because they were  mocked on Beavis and Butthead for their video “Crucified.”  In the video, which I have thoughtfully tacked on at the end here,  the three members of the  band are dressed up like extras from a  Duran Duran by way of Adam and the Ants music video (and maybe that’s not over the top enough).  This, by the way, seems to be their regular costumery (a French-seeming design despite their Swedish origins).

Beavis and Butthead cheer for the (impressive) cleavage and then gag at the lead singer’s  largely naked hairy body dancing in a bathtub.  It’s  pretty confusing.  But it’s also super catchy in a really over the top Europop way.

I have learned over the years that while I don’t really like pop music, I like Europpop a lot more than Ameripop.   It’s much crazier and outlandish, hence: Army of Lovers.

“Crucified” is a really fun, over the top bit of nonsense.  The chorus is incredibly catchy with a wonderful choral voice singing, and the verses are catchy too, they are spoken and in part French.   It’s good campy fun.

Having said that, the rest of the album is a mix of songs that aren’t quite as good as “Crucified” and songs that are just really bad.

The opening of “Candyman Messiah” is dreadful.  “Obsession” features a very mousey-voiced guy singing.  It’s a change and an interesting one, although like a lot of Europop, there’s not a lot of substance to it.

But it’s clear that the Army are not taking themselves seriously, “Dynasty of Planet Chromada” anyone.  The band has some really catchy choruses and I’ll bet it ‘s a hell of a lot of fun to dance to.  Especially if you have a pencil thin mustache.

Believe it or not, Army of Lovers were not just a one-hit wonder .  They released four albums.  And although their website seems to be updated often, I’m fairly certain the band broke up in 1995.  Well, why should that stop anyone?

[READ: Week of March 5, 2012] Gravity’s Rainbow Sections 1.19-2.3

I postulated that Section 1 (called Beyond the Zero) was a mostly expository set up (in one way or another).  And that seems to have been true.  Yes there was some plot development, but it was a lot of setting up new people.  New people are introduced in Section 2, but it is primarily about Slothrop (so far).  These first three sections don’t do a lot to advance the “plot” (I don’t really know what the plot is exactly but it must have something t o do with the war, right?)  Section 2 zooms in on Slothrop.  And while we do learn about the monitoring that goes on with him, for me, Section 2 is all about providing character depth and sympathy for Slothrop.

I found this week’s read to be the easiest so far, with only a few moments of stream of consciousness or reverie to get lost in.   And there were a lot of farcical moments–moments that were practically like a sitcom, which were fun to read and enjoyably insubstantial.

Towards the end of the reading, when Katje ultimately leaves Slothrop, she uses a metaphor comparing the rockets to sex.  And I wondered if maybe that’s why there is so much sex in the book–is it a physical manifestation of the theoretical idea?  Or does he just like using the word cock?

(more…)

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Thomas Pynchon–[Week 2] Gravity’s Rainbow [Sections 1.13-1.18] (1973)

Posted in Chuck D, David Foster Wallace, Ice-T, James Joyce, Megafaun, Military, Political Humor, Racism, Research, Rockwell Knuckles, Russia, Sex, Supernatural, Surreal, The Flaming Lips, Thomas Pynchon, War on March 5, 2012| 8 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: ROCKWELL KNUCKLES-You’re Fucking Out I’m Fucking In (2011).

I downloaded this disc a while ago because I really liked “Silly Human“

I listened to it again recently and realized just how much I like the whole disc.  Rockwell Knuckles has a great delivery style—a basso profundo voice—and a great sense of melody both in his delivery and his backing music.  He captures the best of Chuck D and Ice T.  “Bullet Train Army” has such a cool melody line—and the fact that he raps along with it is fantastic.  Apparently the Bullet Train Army is his posse or something, because it appears a lot on the disc.

“Silly Human” is a fantastic song—a wispy futuristic keyboard riff fizzes away behind Rockwell’s super fast delivery and funny (but not really) lyrics.  The chorus is delivered super quickly in a cool descending melody line.  And I love that someone in the background is shouting Yes Yes! YES! as he deliveries his lines.  It reminds me in strange way of The Flaming Lips.  “Play Catch” shows off his diversity of styles with this more gentle song.  I like the way the verses end with a repeated word which seems like it’s going faster because the beasts speed up,  It’s a cool trick.

“Baking Soda” has a guest rapper (I really don’t like guest rappers, I’m here for Rockwell not Tef Poe, who immediately lost my respect by having his first rhyme end with bitch—lazy!).  I don’t really care for the music behind this one either—cheesy sax and horns.   It’s made up for with “Point of No Return.”  This song has a sung chorus with a weird sci-fi-sounding melody and some great lyrics.  I haven’t really mentioned the lyrics yet but they stand out here “the early bird catches the worm, but the first sponge catches the germs) and a reference to Sojourner Truth.

The lyrics are even better on “Unstoppable” (which has a cool synthy sound over the chorus): “My competition ‘s delayed I’m rocking digital/
Ive been around the world in a day not in the physical/Artistic freedom in what I say y’all are to literal.”

The simple riff behind “Intergalactic” is also cool.  At first I wasn’t sold on Theresa Payne’s backing vocals but I think it works quite well.  I particularly love the chorus of “Supercalifragilisticexpiala-futuristic”

There’s another great delivery melody on “Motto of Today” with more cool sci-fi backing music.  “You Got It” has the great fast beats and delivery that I love out of Atlanta, even though Rockwell is from St. Louis.  There’s even a cool binary joke in the lyrics (1001001).  Guest rapper Vandalyzm fares better, although there’s more curses than actual lyrics in his verse, I think.

“Nomanisan Island” also features Tef Poe, but I like him better on this track.  But maybe that’s because the chorus is great: “No man is an island and we are never stranded”  I’m not sure though that Tef Poe should be singing the line “black tea party, we’re coming to impeach” with Obama in the white house.

“Controlled” I assume has a sample for a chorus, it slows things down nicely and the sound of the drums is fantastic.  I’m partial to the lines “Stone cold like Medusa” and  “Shows about to start, I don’t know when it will end, son/ Puppet on a string controlled by Jim Henson” (whatever that means, I like it).

“Every Angle” has a groovy chorus that I like despite itself.  Rockwell makes it flow wonderfully.  And the final track, “Natural Born Leader” opens with a simple rocking guitar riff.  When the lyrics kick in, the song soars with 70s keyboards and big guitars.

This album is really fantastic.  And while there are plenty of deserving artists out there, Rockwell Knuckles is amazing and should be huge.  Don’t be put off by the album title or the cover, this album is more about melody than a cursing.

You can download the whole album here for free.

Oh, and the reason I chose this is because of a note I had written in the margins of GR, which I thought had read No Man is an Island, but which didn’t.  Oops.

[READ: Week of February 27] Gravity’s Rainbow 1.13-1.18

I found a few of this week’s sections to be more challenging to get through.  There are a lot of long passages that are meandering–often with an unclear narrator (although the narrator usually becomes apparent by the end).  During these section, it feels like the book is just drifting of into a reverie for a while before snapping out of it and getting back to the business at hand.  And that seem apt given all of the crazy stuff that happens in the book (all of the mental/psychological ideas).

After reading a few of the posts at Infinite Zombies this week, I have new eyes for the book.  When I first read all of the sex in the book, I thought again about Joyce’s Ulysses and all of the sex that he described (shockingly for the time) and how modern writers seem to revel in writing about sex–not pornographically, just “real.”  But now, after reading Christine’s post, I had to rethink this attitude on sex.  I’ve been surprised by Pynchon’s frequent use of the words “cock” and “cunt” as anatomical names.  “Cock” in particular is a word I don’t hear used all that often in fiction and it has (to my ear) a kind of crass/vulgar connotation. And what more needs to be said about “cunt.”  I wondered if this was a Pynchon thing or a 70s thing or an I’m-too-uptight thing, but in Christine’s post she writes: “One of the things I most loathe about the other Pynchon books I’ve read is the latent, creepy, old-man sex fetish” and “the constant phallic status updates (noted in my paperback as I.P.R.s [infantile penis reference]” (which is hilarious, by the way).  This has made me even more aware of all the sex in the book–although to what end I’m not sure yet.

Jeff’s post at Infinite Zombies focuses on Roger and Jessica (I know that wasn’t the point of the post, but the mind takes what it will) and makes me think of Roger as more of a protagonist of the story.  Even more than Pirate (who, coming first, I assumed was the focus).  And  this week’s reading reveals more importance for Roger.

So on to the read: (more…)

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Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer–“The Longest Detroyed Poem” (Numéro Cinq, August 24, 2010)

Posted in Babies, Canadian Content, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer, Nick Cave, Numéro Cinq, Pregnancy, Sex, Short Story, The Road, The Walrus, Violence, Warren Ellis on March 1, 2012| 2 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: NICK CAVE AND WARREN ELLIS-The Road: Original Film Score (2009).

I haven’t seen The Road, and I probably never will.  Nor have I read it.  The only reason I was listening to the soundtrack was because I like Nick Cave.  So this is a contextless review.  Of course, I know what the book is about and I rather assume that the film is equally harrowing.  I expected the soundtrack to be full of desolation and horror.

So I was quite surprised that most of the main themes are played on a piano with gentle strings or simply violins.  True there is a sense of emptiness and loss in these songs (they’re not jaunty piano pieces or anything) but they are still unexpectedly pretty.

Of course,a song like “The Cannibals” is bound to be more disconcerting, which it is.  It starts with creepy scratchy violins and then tribal drums take over–all set over a buzzing background.  This is more of what I expected the whole score to be like.   Similarly, “The House” must be a very frightening scene, as the music is threatening, loud, intense and quite scary with, again, more creepy percussion.  Unsurprisingly, a track called “The Cellar” is also spooky; it is only a minute long.

But then songs like “The Church” are so delicate and beautiful and not even all that sad–it actually makes me wonder what the scene in the film is showing.  The end of the score feels like the end of a movie, which I know it is, but it feels like a conventional movie, with closure, something I’m led to believe the book doesn’t have a lot of.

Taken away from the movie, this soundtrack is quite nice.  Aside from the three scarier tracks, this would make for some nice listening on a sad, rainy Sunday.

[READ: February 28, 2012] “The Longest Destroyed Poem”

I enjoyed Kuitenbrouwer’s “Corpse” so much that I decided to see what else she had written.  It comes to three books and four uncollected short stories.  There’s “Corpse” from The Walrus, this one here, another one called “Laikas” (which has a different title on the site where it lives) and a fourth with a broken link.  Boo.

But that’s okay because I’ll certainly investigate her books too.

Like “Corpse,” this story explores women’s sexuality, but it explores it in a very different way.  In fact, I loved the way it was introduced–especially because of the wonderfully convoluted way the sentence reveals it (and how it’s not even the main point of the sentence):

She looked fabulous. Better than back then, when she’d thought she wanted to be an artist, and Victor had made a point — she realized this as she realized many many things, that is she realized it in retrospect — of dropping into the conversation — the one she hadn’t actually been having with him, because she was instead focused almost solely on the fact his much younger roommate had a hand under the blanket her crotch also happened to be under — that he was off to bed early so he could work on a poem he’d been having trouble with.

I had to read it twice because I thought it was funny the first time, and when I fully parsed it, it was even funnier.

So yes, sex.  But as the story opens, years after the above event, Rosa sees Victor and decides to crash into him with her car.  It’s shocking and it’s shockingly well told.

I love the way Kuitenbrouwer uses language.  I could probably quote from this story six or seven times, but I love this sentence that forecasts the trouble ahead:  “Victor noticed her in that split second, too, and he knew what Rosa was up to, for his face changed, channel surfing from neutral smug — well, this was his everyday face — to impending doom.”

As she’s about to ram him (with a Prius, no less), we flash back to their spirited relationship. (more…)

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