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Archive for the ‘Short Story’ Category

George Saunders–“Al Roosten” (New Yorker, February 2, 2009)

Posted in Coldplay, Doves, Dreams, Elbow, George Saunders, Humiliation, New Yorker, Peter Gabriel, Radiohead, Short Story on March 14, 2009| 1 Comment »

ny2209SOUNDTRACK: ELBOW-Leaders of the Free World (2005).

elbowSo this is where Peter Gabriel has been!

The opening track of this album starts quietly with a vocal doppelganger of Peter Gabriel crooning in his low voice.  In fact, throughout the album Peter Gabriel’s voice pops up.  It’s certainly not a case of trying to be Gabriel, as their music isn’t at all the same, it’s just that the voice is eerily similar sometimes.

This is my first exposure to Elbow, so I guess everyone has long known about this Peter Gabriel thing.  But I’m new to the party.  I’d read that this was their best disc, so I got this one first.

I’ve now listened to this record a half a dozen times and I’m still not exactly sure how to classify it.  And even though I like it, I don’t think I love it.

They remind me a bit of early Radiohead, and yet that’s not quite right.  And they remind me sort of of Coldplay, but that’s not right either.  They have similarities to Doves, but they’re not quite as mopey.  I guess they’re just a good rocking British band.  This album contains many heavy moments, but there are also some thoughtful, mellow sections. And lyrically it’s quite interesting, especially the title track.

I’m intrigued enough by it to want to check out other records by them, and although I said I didn’t love the record, by the sixth listen I was singing along with most of the tracks.  Weird.  But good weird.

[READ: March 4, 3009] “Al Roosten”

I had mixed reactions to George Saunders’ In Persuasion Nation some time ago, but I started this story and it sounded promising.  And it was.

Al Roosten is a dumpy, middle aged man.  All of his life he has lived in the shadows of thinner, nicer, and, well, better boys and girls.  Now that he is an adult and an owner of an antiques shoppe called Bygone Daze, he has been invited as a Local Celebrity to take part in an anti drug “auction” (the winner has lunch with the “celebrity”).

Al goes on after Larry Donfrey (of Donfrey Realty).  Larry showed up to the auction in just a swimsuit.  His studly physique elicited quite the reaction.  Buy when Al struts on stage, the whoops and hollers are more start as mockery but soon morphs into pity.  And this sets off a story that takes place mostly in Al’s head.  He changes his mind about Larry several times in the story from admiring him to hating him to pitying him to being super pissed about him.

Al exacts a small bit of revenge backstage (and a very satisfying one, I admit).  But on the way home he questions himself and feels bad for what he has done.  After talking with his dead mother, he gathers his strength, and plans to do something about his failing business.  And yet once again, he questions his motives and behaviors.

This was a fun piece about the self-reflection that can lead to impotent behavior in one’s life.  It’s a great examination of blame, frustration and catharsis.  This tips the balance of Saunders’ work to the positive for me.

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A.M. Homes–“Brother on Sunday” (New Yorker, March 2, 2009)

Posted in A.M. Homes, David Foster Wallace, Drinking, Marriage Trouble, Matt Pinfield, Mott the Hoople, New Yorker, Short Story, Supergrass on March 12, 2009| Leave a Comment »

ny32SOUNDTRACK: SUPERGRASS-Diamond Hoo Ha (2008).

diamondI’ve enjoyed Supergrass since they were young whipper-snappers on their first album I Should Coco.  It was a mix of fast catchy pop about being young and foolish.   I was even more impressed with the expanded sounds on their follow-up In It for the Money.

Their last few albums haven’t excited me as much, (hard to believe they’ve only released six) but I heard an interview with them and Matt Pinfield, and it convinced me that this one was going to be great.

I was a little disappointed at first.  The disc wasn’t quite as all over the place as Money was, in fact the first five songs were pretty straight ahead rockers (and much more rocking than their past songs would indicate).  But after listening a few times, I’ve really started to get into it.

The disc is split in half.  The first five songs are such simple, basic rockers that I was initially bored by them.  They weren’t bad per se, they just seemed too simple.  After several listens however, I’ve found them to be delightfully catchy, heavy pop rock gems.  And that the simplicity is deceptive.  They sound like long lost 70s riff rock highlights.  The title track with its oddball break of “Bite Me” was once played on Chuck (the latest TV show which is the arbiter of cool music).

The second half comes in with “The Return of Inspiration…” (which may not be the best song title to put halfway through your record, especially when the second half sounds so much different than the first).  This half is much more in keeping with Supergrass’ sillier side.

We get some funk charged stuff (“Rough Knuckles”) and some overt pop ala Mott the Hoople (“Ghost of a Friend”).  Outright silliness even rears its head (the opening of “Whiskey and Green Tea” is a march/chant complete with crazy horns), which morphs into a solid rocker).

Because their first two albums are so great, I’m not sure I can really compare this to them, but Diamond Hoo Ha has many great, fun moments; it is definitely a high point of their catalog.

[READ: March4, 2009] “Brother on Sunday”

I have read a number of works by A.M. Homes, and I really enjoyed her.  I haven’t seen anything by her in quite some time for whatever reason, so it was good to see her back.  Because of The End of Alice (concerning a pedophile) I think of her as being something of  a grisly/controversial writer (she is also tied somewhat to David Foster Wallace since The End of Alice and Infinite Jest were two very talked about books in 1996).  But after reading this piece and realizing that it was similar in tone/theme to her book  Music for Torching, I realized that she is more an observer of bad behavior, not just grisly behavior. (more…)

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David Foster Wallace–“Wiggle Room” & D.T. Max “The Unfinished: David Foster Wallace’s struggle to surpass Infinite Jest (New Yorker, March 9, 2009)

Posted in Big Books, Books about writers, Boredom, Corporate skewering, D.T. Max, David Foster Wallace, Demons, Love, New Yorker, Rush, Short Story, Smarty Pants, Suicide, Work on March 6, 2009| 1 Comment »

newyorkerSOUNDTRACK: LOVE-Da Capo (1967).

dacapoA few years ago, my friend John gave me Love’s Forever Changes. I’ve enjoyed that disc very much and decided to get some other Love music.  I chose Da Capo (their second album, and the one just prior to Forever Changes) for two reasons.  One: Rush did a cover of “Seven and Seven Is” on their Flashback CD and two: there’s an 18 minute song on it, and I love me an eighteen minute song.

The first side is a bunch of shorter songs; each one is quite charming. In fact, “Orange Skies” is so sweet, complete with flute solo, that you can pretty much hear Arthur Lee smiling all the way through it.  The song is borderline cheesy, and yet I can’t help but find myself walking around singing “orange skies, carnivals and cotton candy and you….and I love you too.”

“Stephanie Knows Too” is kind of angular with a weird jazzy interlude.  And “Que Vida” is just a poppy little number that is fun and interesting.  It fits well with “The Castle,” another stop/start song that has a beautiful guitar melody at the opening.  The side ends with a classic psychedelic track “She Comes in Colors.”

The only oddball of the side is, paradoxically, the single “Seven and Seven Is.” It’s a fast rocking number with the fascinating chorus of “Oop ip ip Oop ip ip, yeah!”  Perhaps the only line that’s stranger is “If I don’t start crying it’s because I have got no eyes.” And this was the single?  Clearly Arthur Lee liked his psychedelia.

Then we move to the 18 minute gem.  Well, in fact, “Revelation” (the first song ever to take up an entire side of an album) is something of a disappointment to me.  It is basically a jam that sounds like it was done in one take, although since Arthur Lee was a taskmaster I doubt very much that it was one take.

It’s starts promisingly enough with a rapid harpsichord intro, but it moves into a fairly mundane jam session. There’s a great line from a Paul F. Tompkins skit, in which he says that jazz is just music of solos: “everybody gets one, it’s not like regular music where only the best dude gets one, in jazz everybody gets one.”

And that’s the case with this song.  The solos go: guitar, harmonica, vocals (Arthur Lee improvising some pretty lame segments (Mostly about how he feels good), and let me tell you, he’s no Jim Morrison when it comes to this sort of thing), another guitar solo, a clarinet solo (!), then a bass solo and finally a drum solo, rounded all out with a harpsichord outro that mimics the beginning.  The problem is that none of the solos (excepting the guitar) is particularly noteworthy, and it’s not recorded especially well.  It’s all rather flat.  In particular the sing along part, where Lee is screaming and whatnot, it’s just not convincing, especially since the band doesn’t seem all that excited about the proceedings.  I got tired of it at after about 5 minutes (although the opening of the clarinet solo which sounds an awful ot like a flock of geese is pretty cool).  It’s a shame really, because I wanted to like this track a lot.  Nevertheless, it hasn’t put me off of Love.

[READ: March 3, 2009] “Wiggle Room”

This week’s New Yorker featured not only a story by David Foster Wallace but also a sort of biography/obituary of him.  D.T. Max, a name straight out of Wallace’s imagination, writes a moving and depressing epilogue to the story of DFW.  (It’s available here) The main thrust of the article is that DFW had a hard time writing fiction after Infinite Jest, but that he had been working on a new book (which, although unfinished, is due to be published sometime this year). (more…)

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McSweeney’s #30 [Rejoice! Forge-Ahead/Throwback Issue]

Posted in Arrested Development, Beck, Bill Cotter, Catherine Bussinger, Drinking, Kevin Moffett, Marriage Trouble, McSweeney's, Michael Cera, Oddities, Pregnancy, Racism, Radiohead, Short Story, Superbad, Supernatural, The Flaming Lips, Threats, Wells Tower on March 4, 2009| 2 Comments »

30SOUNDTRACK: THE FLAMING LIPS-Fight Test EP (2003).

fightThe test begins NOW!

With the success of Yoshimi, the Lips put out a couple of multitrack EPs.  The first one was for “Fight Test.”  In addition to the title track, this EP features three great covers: “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” is a slow acoustic guitar/timpani version of the infectious Kylie Minogue hit.  Despite its slowness, the “La La La” part is still catchy!  Next is a cover of the Beck song “The Golden Age.”  It’s also an acoustic guitar version.  Finally is a cover of Radiohead’s “Knives Out.”  It’s not quite as manic as the Radiohead version but it’s still very good.

The next three tracks include a 9 minute dance remix of “Do You Realize??” which is fun enough, if you like that sort of thing.  “The Strange Design of Conscience” sounds like it could have been an outtake from Yoshimi.  It fits in quite well with the music and themes of the CD.  “Thank You Jack White (For the Fiber Optic Jesus That You Gave Me)” is a 3 and a half minute folk song relating the (presumably true) tale of a plastic Jesus that Jack White gave to Wayne.

It must be fun to be able to write a thank you song that thousands of people will hear.

Lots of times EPs aren’t really worth the time, but this is a very good one.  The covers are a lot of fun, and you’ll be La La Laing right along with Wayne.

[READ: February 24, 2009] McSweeney’s 30

This issue of McSweeney’s hearkens back to their initial three issues: a white paperback with words in a graphic design on the cover. The cover design is an homage to Obama’s presidency, and has some thoughtful as well as funny lines on it (You Can Take That Canadian Flag Sticker Off Your Backpack Now). It was also printed in Iceland once again (in a nice bid to help Iceland’s economy, which is actually worse than ours) by Oddi Printing.

The contents of the issue are also pretty straightforward: eleven short stories and some occasional art by Jason Polan which ties into the stories. (more…)

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McSweeney’s#1 [Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern (or “Gegenshein”) Autumn 1998 “The Ski Instructor”]

Posted in 19th Century, Bill Clinton, Books about writers, Christmas on Mars, Consumerism, David Foster Wallace, Egyptology, Essays, Flash Fiction, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Glasgow Phillips, John Hodgman, Komar and Melamid, Led Zeppelin, Marriage Trouble, McSweeney's, Meta, Neal Pollack, Racism, Rick Moody, Roberto Bolaño, Sarah Vowell, Short Story, Smarty Pants, The Flaming Lips, War, Zev Borow on January 13, 2009| 3 Comments »

mcsweeneys1SOUNDTRACK: THE FLAMING LIPS-Hear It Is (1986).

hear-it-isI’ve claimed that I love the Lips, but then I was very harsh about their cover of “White Christmas,” and I noted that I wouldn’t listen to the soundtrack of  Christmas on Mars very much.  So, I felt I owed them some love.  But my recollection of their early stuff was that it was pretty weird and hard to listen to.

And yet, I proved myself wrong.  Hear It Is is not the Flaming lips of the early 2000’s.  It’s almost like the bratty younger brother of that band.  Only Wayne and Michael Ivins are present, and the band is pretty much just guitar, bass and drums.  The guitar is distorted and noisy (except when it’s acousticy and mellow).  The album doesn’t sound too far out of place for a college radio record in the late 80s.

Except of course that Wayne and the boys are pretty out there. The music is psychedelic, acid inspired and quite punk.  So you get songs like “Jesus Shootin’ Heroin” a seven minute epic of heavy riffs and screaming, but also of background “Ahhhh’s”.  You also get “With You” a song that starts out like a pretty, acoustic ballad. “Godzilla Flick” is a ballad like no other.  And yet despite all of the freakouts and noise, really at this stage what you get is a Led Zeppelin inspired heavy garage band having a lot of fun.  To say that this is going to blow your mind would be unfair, but to anyone who says the early stuff is unlistenable, they are totally wrong.   Hear It Is is sloppy, punky and a little ridiculous, the ideal incubator for what will become the Lips of 2000.

This CD comes with a cover of “Summertime Blues.”  This disc was reissued along with their initial EP and some bonus tracks on the disc Finally the Punk Rockers are Taking Acid.

[READ: 1998 and January 10, 2009] McSweeney’s #1

I have been reading McSweeney’s since its inception.  (My copy of this issue even has the two page typed letter that explains the failure of Might magazine and the origins of this one. However, it’s been over ten years since I read the first issues.  Given my new perspective on McSweeney’s, and how I read just about everything they release, I thought it was about time to go back to the beginning and proceed through the issues until I meet up where I first started reviewing them.

Issue #1 has many features that are absent in later issues:

First is the cover.  This cover is simply filled with words; practically littered with them.  There are subtitles, there are jokes, there’s all sorts of things (I mean, just look at the full title of this issue).

Second is the letters column.  The difference with this letters column compared to most publications is that they are all (or mostly) nonsense.  One comes from an author whose piece is accepted into the issue (Morgan Phillips).  Another is a funny/silly letter from Sarah Vowell.  And there’s a letter to his cousin from John Hodgman (whose comic potential may not have been tapped at this point?). (more…)

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McSweeney’s #29 (2008)

Posted in Adventure, Fishbone, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Joyce Carol Oates, King's X, Marriage Trouble, McSweeney's, Meta, Military, Outer Space, Roddy Doyle, Sex, Short Story, Smarty Pants, Threats, Unlikable main character, Violence, War, Yannick Murphy on January 11, 2009| Leave a Comment »

mc29SOUNDTRACK: FISHBONE-Give a Monkey a Brain and He’ll Swear He’s the Center of the Universe (1993).

monkeyI had actually forgotten about this album, because it was so overshadowed by Truth and Soul and Reality….. When I put it on I wasn’t expecting much (Fishbone had something of a precipitous decline around this time).  So, I was amazingly delighted with how much I remembered this album and how much I enjoyed it (which shows to me that I must have listened to it a lot back in college).

This album is much much heavier than anything they’ve done up to this point (I can’t speak for the releases that came after it).  It does have some variety of songs, but not nearly as much as their previous releases.  The other notable thing is that there’s no short songs on it.  There’s none of the one minute songs that they’ve put throughout their discs.

“Swim” was the single from the album and it is heavy and moshy.  The video, I seem to recall, was a lot of people crowd surfing.  “Black Flowers” slows things down a bit, but unlike previous ballads, this one is still pretty loud.  It’s got a great catchy melody, but it’s still  quite dark. “Servitude” reminds me of some of King’s X’s s darker moments, with their riffs and dark harmonies.  (This just shows how Fishbone is much more metal on this release).  Their first “lighter” song is the return to ska with “Unyielding Condition.”  It’s a nice let up from the heaviness, and is still catchy. “Lemon Meringue” is the other lighter moment, with a nice bass riff included.

Funk returns with “Properties of Propaganda” and the repeated chants of “Fuk This Shit on Up.”  “The Warmth of Your Breath” is hardcore insanity, the type of song that would have been about 2 minutes on another disc sort of overstays its welcome, although the often repeated line “may your dog’s colon be familiar with the warmth of your breath” while barely audible can’t help but raise a smile.  And even though “Drunk Skitzo” features Branford Marsalis, it’s still too long for such silliness.

So, it’s really the first half of the disc that I liked a lot…I guess some discs run too long.

I never got a Fishbone CD after this one.   The reviews were pretty lousy by then.  But of course, the reviews of this one were lousy too, so maybe I’m, selling their later output short.

[READ: January 3, 2009] McSweeney’s # 29

My cover for this book happens to be red.  Huh.

This issue comes as a hardcover book.  There are planets on the cover, including a die cut hole that shows the moon of the next page.

On the bottom of every page of the book are matchbox labels.  Most of them are Eastern European in origin.  They were collected by Jane McDevitt, a web designer in the UK.  Some of the images are available on her Flickr site: www.flickr.com/photos/maraid.  They are a pretty cool collection of images.  And, they brighten up all the work . (more…)

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Alice Munro–“Some Women” (New Yorker, December 22 & 29, 2008)

Posted in Alice Munro, Canadian Content, Cancer as plot device, Christmas Album, Marriage (Happy), New Yorker, Short Story, Sufjan Stevens on January 7, 2009| 3 Comments »

TNY 12.22&29.08 cvr.inddSOUNDTRACK: SUFJAN STEVENS–Ding! Dong! Songs for Christmas Vol. III (2006).

dingdong1Disc Three of the Sufjan Christmas collection is my favorite.  It returns to the more mellow, folksy style of the first disc (and is replete with banjo!).  It opens with some thing of a reprise of “O Come, O Come Emanuel” (only a minute long).  It’s piano and vocals and very pretty.  It proceeds to his boppingest, Christmas song on the whole set: “Come on, Let’s Boogey to the Elf Dance” with multiple singers and lots of instruments (and a fugue pattern of voices, too).   It continues with two traditional songs: “We Three Kings” (possibly the best version I heard all season) and “O Holy Night.”  I’ve mentioned that “O Holy Night is one of my favorite Christmas songs, and this version is quite good, with lovely harmonies (from different people listed although, no one credited specifically for the track) and the way it builds to such a full song by the end.

Despite the title, “That Was the Worst Christmas Ever!” sounds beautifully reminiscent of Sufjan’s catchiest banjo-infused songs on Illinois (the mellow ones without orchestration).  “Ding! Dong!” is a short instrumental.  “All the Kings Horns,” is an original.  And the disc ends with “The Friendly Beasts,” which some will note is Sarah’s favorite Christmas song.  I like this version more than most others, although the doubling vocals make it a little hard to understand.

So, hooray for Vol. III!

[READ: January 5, 2009] “Some Women”

Alice Munro continues to be shockingly prolific.  At this rate I’ll have read her entire forthcoming short story collection before it even comes out. (more…)

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Donald Antrim–“Another Manhattan” (New Yorker, December 22 & 29, 2008)

Posted in Christmas Album, Donald Antrim, Drinking, Funny (ha ha), Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, Short Story, Sufjan Stevens, Suicide on January 7, 2009| Leave a Comment »

TNY 12.22&29.08 cvr.inddSOUNDTRACK: SUFJAN STEVENS–Hark! Songs for Christmas Vol. II (2006).

harkIf we imagine that Sufjan had fun with vol. 1 one, then he must have had twice as much fun with vol. 2.  It’s nearly twice as long and full of a lot of short ditties.  “Angels We Have Heard on High” and “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” are short (less than a minute) instrumental versions (on keyboards which almost sound like a music box) of those songs (something that will become prominent throughout the series).  I love his version of “I Saw Three Ships,” the instrumentation is exotic and wonderful.

“Put the Lights on the Tree” is an original that sounds the most like Sufjan’s Illinois record.  It has those Michael Nymanesque fugue-like keyboard/orchestra bits and lots of backing vocals.  It’s only a shame it’s so short.  “Come Thou Font of Every Blessing” is a another mellow banjo folkie song that dates from the 18th century.  And “Only at Christmas Time” is another original, delicate and mellow.  I love that he can do such mellow songs even though he is known for his full orchestration.

“Once in Royal David’s City” (with lead banjo) and “We Three Kings” are sung by a guest vocalist: Vito Aiuto.  His voice is quite similar to Sufjans’s but is a bit more powerful.  “What Child is This Anyway” is a 6 minute keyboard-infused epic of the traditional song.  It’s very cool, with some interesting fuzztones on the keybaords.  And finally, “Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella”  is a subdued ending to the disc, sounding like it was recorded on an old phonograph.

It’s a nice progression from the first EP.

[READ: January 5, 2009] “Another Manhattan”

Some stories move along at a very brisk pace.  This is one of those stories.  Admittedly, in the beginning it was a little tough keeping the characters straight, but after a few paragraphs, it all falls into place.

The story is about two couples: Jim and Kate and and Elliot and Susan.  Jim & Kate are married, and Elliot & Susan are married.  (more…)

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Heidi Julavits–“The Santosbrazzi Killer” (Harper’s, January 2009)

Posted in Fishbone, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Gangsters, Harper's, Heidi Julavits, Short Story, Ska, Supernatural, The Believer, Threats on January 6, 2009| 1 Comment »

haroers109SOUNDTRACK: FISHBONE-Truth and Soul (1988).

truthsoulFishbone opens up yet another album with a fantastic one-two punch. Truth and Soul is  Fishbones’s perfect blend of ska, punk and hardcore.  This album has a few heavy moments but it was recorded before they got the heavy metal into their system.

The disc opens with “Freddie’s Dead.”  Which is just a blast of rocking funk.  It is catchy, it is fun to sing along to, and it rocks. It’s followed by “Ma and Pa” a fantastic ska song that is darkly humorous [“Hey Ma and Pa, what the hell is wrong with y’all?”].  It also features great vocal effects throughout the song: grunts and groans in place of beats and notes.  It’s just fantastic. These are probably two of the best songs of the late 1980s. The following two songs slow things down a bit, with “Pouring Rain” being a 5 minute long ballad.

“Deep Inside” follows with a blast of punk and call and response vocals.  And “Mighty Long Way” is an upbeat, keyboard heavy track about friendship.  It also has a great guitar riff (and really shows off the wailing guitar solos that will come up on later records).

This all leads to the majesty of “Bonin’ in the Boneyard” (the lyric sheet for this states: “If you can’t figure this one out, then you are lame!”).  This song is just an amazing horn-filled, bass slapping riot of a good time.  In general I don’t like horns in rock, but there is something about horns and ska that are just perfect.  And I could listen to this horn section all night long.

“One Day” comes next.  It’s less hectic, but contains more great guitar work and some great harmony vocals.  It’s a very catchy song about racism.  “Subliminal Fascism” is another short song that shows some of  their newly found metal leanings.  “Slow Bus Movin'” deals more overtly with racism, and yet its comical use of western-style music is something of a surprise.

“Ghetto Soundwave” and “Change” end the album with another one-two shot of greatness.  “Soundwave” is a fantastic horn-filled song.  And “Change” is a truly beautiful ballad.

Truth and Soul is a great album.

[READ: December 29, 2008]: “The Santosbrazzi Killer”

I’ve been meaning to read Julavits’ novel The Uses of Enchantment for some time, but it keeps getting pushed back by other titles.  So, this is my first exposure to her as anything other than editor of The Believer.  And I enjoyed this story very much.

The main character is a overseer–she travels to a Cincinnati-based subsidiary research outfit and criticizes them.  At some point in the story she admits she’s pretty much an asshole: officious, nitpicky, antisocial, and really quite unpleasant (Sample: “I arrived with my insulated travel mug filled with clearly superior off-site coffee”).  On this particular trip something different happens: she gets to stay in a different hotel than her usual place: The Tuck Inn.

After doing her job (and making everyone very tense), she returns to her hotel and inquires about a place to eat.  The concierge explains that there’s a bar/cafe downstairs.  The snooty waiter/bartender offers her a “bible” of a menu (with at least 476 pages).  Among her choices are: the Grinning Necrophiliac and the Vengeful Subsidiary (which she requests, but is not allowed to have due to the bartender’s lack of an essential tool).   And so, she settles on the titular Santosbrazzi Killer.

After waiting some time, a gentleman sits down.  He explains that what she ordered was not so much a drink as, well….  I’m not going to give it away.  From this point the story gets very interesting: the tension mounts, and yet the dark humor never departs.  It was a very enjoyable story.

It also introduced me to a new verb: to jick.  It is used throughout the story.  Initially it described the action of clicking a ball point pen.  But as the story progresses, the verb is used in a few different places (usually denoting a sound), with the meaning always being relevant.

Assuming this is representative of Julavits’ work, I’m looking forward to reading her novel one of these days.

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Richard Van Camp–“Show Me Yours…” (The Walrus, November 2007)

Posted in Canadian Content, Consumerism, Dreams, It's a Wonderful Life, Richard Van Camp, Short Story, The Walrus on December 31, 2008| Leave a Comment »

walrusnov07SOUNDTRACK: FISHBONE-Fishbone EP (1985)

fishboneAfter listening to “It’s a Wonderful Life (Gonna Have a Good Time)” at Christmas, I had to bust out the old Fishbone discs, which I haven’t done in quite some time.  So I’m beginning with the EP that started it all.

This EP will always have a special place for me. It is fast, funny, energetic and is an awesome mix of ska, punk and just plain old offensive silliness.  There’s 6 songs.  “Ugly” has the chorus “U-G-L-Y, you ain’t got no alibi, you’re just ugly.”  They are surely not the first bunch of people to say that (I seem to recall saying it as a kid myself), but they certainly do it in the most catchy fashion.  It also sets the tone for the EP: fast ska, silly lyrics and totally fun.  “Another Generation” is more serious, but as a good sign for things to come, it is no less catchy, and it highlights the various singers in the band.  “? (Modern Industry)” is a favorite.  It’s just a list of radio stations, but it’s set to an awesome skanking rhythm.  And it’s fun to pick out the stations near where you live (if any are still around 22 years later).  “Party at Ground Zero” will always be an amazingly fun song.  The horns are great, the tune is great.  Everything: great.  “V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.” Twenty-two years later I finally learned that this title stands for Voyage to the Land of the Freeze Dried Godzilla Fart. Thanks internet.  And of course, the last track “Lyin’ Ass Bitch” always made us laugh in college.  It is silly and rude.  As a sensible grown up, of course, I disapprove of the lyrics, but really it’s very funny.

Fishbone was headed for greatness in just a few short years.

[READ: December 26, 2008] “Show Me Yours…”

This story comes from the special Arctic issue of the Walrus.  When the story began I was concerned that it was a story steeped in Inuit tradition as I was pretty lost for the first couple paragraphs. (more…)

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