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Archive for the ‘Violence’ Category

Mary Gaitskill–“The Other Place” (New Yorker, February 14 & 21, 2011)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Butthole Surfers, Death, Drinking, Fears, Mary Gaitskill, Mayyors, New Yorker, Pregnancy, Short Story, The Jesus Lizard, Threats, Unlikable main character, Violence on March 22, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: MAYYORS: 3 EPs (online only) (2008-2009).

I learned about Mayyors from the NPR’s Best Metal and Outer Sounds releases of 2009 on All Songs Considered.  I enjoyed Viking’s picks for 2010 quite a bit so I thought I’d investigate his previous years’ selections.  I’d never heard of Mayyors before, but he makes the band sound so intriguing (and dirty).

The write up is so wonderfully enigmatic that I had to find the tracks online.  I mean, how can you pass up this:

This is a plea to Mayyors: If you’re going to release one of the ugliest pieces of noise rock this side of The Jesus Lizard, please start issuing your music in editions bigger than David Yow’s beer gut. After a couple of ripped 7″ singles made the rounds on blogs last year, those seeking the puss-popping skronk of Mayyors scavenged message boards and listservs to get their hands on the next limited affair. (After all, these Sacramento-based dudes don’t have a Web site or any known email addresses. Punk rock, I guess.) The Deads 12″ EP significantly dirties the rock gene pool with nauseating feedback and power chords dumber than the actual mud driven over the orange covers. Once again, Google is your friend.

That link to Google is the only way I was able to find these songs.

So Mayyors have released three EPs since 2008.  Each had a pressing of about ten copies, apparently.  You really can’t find any information about them online.  I don’t even understand how the band plays shows since their total recorded output is about 2o minutes long.  But I was able to get all 9 songs.

Having said all, that I don’t always like the music.  It hurts your head. The general sound is really downtuned sludge rock.  It’s not squealy feedbacky noise, it’s just distorted guitars played very loud and fast with vocals that are pretty incomprehensible (with lots of echo!). I have no idea what he’s singing about.  I’m sure it’s not very nice.  But I feel like their music would be even more subversive if they sang about love and kindness (or like the cover of Megan’s LOLZ: unicorns and rainbows).

The first EP: Marines Dot Com has two tracks “Metro” (3:08) and “Fatigure” (3:35).  “Metro” reminds me a lot of early Butthole Surfers.  “Fatigure” has a discernible riff (which is of course very downtuned.  It’s entirely possible they have only a guitar and a bass.  About half way through, the song changes into a noise-fest.  Of course, nearly 4 minutes of noise is pretty tough to handle.  Especially since the noise is sludgy and loud loud loud.

The middle EP, Megan’s LOLZ, is my favorite.  Three songs: “Intro” (0:59), “Airplanes” (3:23), “White Jeep” (2:18).  The noise and sludge is still there, but you can actually hear nascent riffs under all the noise. It also seems a little crisper (or something), which makes the tracks stand out a little more.

“Intro” actually plays around with different kinds of noise, suggesting they’re in for something new on this EP (of course, it’s still buried under noise and sludge).  “Airplanes” has another discernible riff, although it does sound like it’s recorded in an airplane hangar.  “White Jeep” has a similar (if not the same) riff, but it plays a bit more with feedback and genuinely piecing noises.  (There’s even a  kind of guitar solo).

The latest EP, the one that Viking likes, is called Deads.  It has four songs: “The Crawl” (1:41), “Ghost Punch” (1:41) “Clicks (2:42) and “Deads” (2:53).  And as he describes above, the cover does appear to have been driven over by a muddy truck.

This album is a bit more “polished” (how dare anyone use that word).  In fact the sludge doesn’t really get put onto “The Crawl” until about 50 seconds in.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a sludgy mess, but you can sort of tell what instruments there are and that there’s a guy singing.   “Ghost Punch” sounds a bit more death metal-like than their other songs, although it’s so tinny, it sort of transcends the genre somewhat.  “Clicks” seems to be the song of choice for examples of what Mayyors can do.  It’s got intense delay, squealing noises and a vocal melody! (Do I hear screams of sellout?).  Hear it and “The Crawl” here.  “Deads” actually has staccato notes in the opening, but it’s all sludge from there.

And then there’s silence.  Blissful silence.  Mayyors: Not for the sensitive.

[READ: March 5, 2011] “The Other Place”

Mary Gaitskill is generally acknowledged as a master short story writer.  I haven’t read all that much by her.

I’m not sure if her stories are all as dark as this one, but man this is quite dark, indeed.  It’s about a man and his son.  Well, actually it begins with the son.  He is into guns. Like really into guns. He draws them, he makes stories about them, he plays guns outside even if they don’t have guns.  He also loves violence on TV, especially if it’s funny.  The boy is thirteen.

When I read the story, I initially thought that the father was upset or worried about this gun fascination, because he opens the story with “How did this happen?”  But he seems to know how this happened: “The way everything does, of course.  One thing follows another, naturally.”

And so, with the wrong impression, I couldn’t quite understand why the father was so surprised by the son’s behavior because as the father relates his own past, it’s pretty full of violence itself.  Indeed, as it progresses, it seems like the son inherited all of his father’s traits. (more…)

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Tessa Hadley–“Honor” (New Yorker, February 7, 2011)

Posted in Death, Marriage Trouble, Mogwai, New Yorker, Short Story, Tessa Hadley, Violence on March 17, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: MOGWAI-4 Satin EP (1997).

Mogwai seemed to thunder onto the scene back in 1997.  I missed this disc when it came out but I was on board with their debut.  And then it seemed like a whole bunch of stuff was released right away: a collection of early EPs and a remix album.  It was a little hard to keep everything straight including what the band actually sounded like.

This EP is pretty representative of their early sound: it has three songs that are less “songs” than they are soundscapes (or something).   It’s something of a noise fest.  Unlike their later songs which have discernible melodies (and are actually quite catchy) the three songs on this EP are more percussion and effects than actual melodies.

“Superheroes of BMX” is a series of washes over a simple series of electronic-sounding beats (it actually seems appropriate that they were on Chemical Underground records).  Although by around 5 minutes the minimal guitar structures do come out.  “Now You’re Taken” is closer to a proper song.  It has a beautiful understated structure and vocals (!) by Aidan Moffat of Arab Strap.

But it’s “Stereodee” that really stands out: 13 minutes of noise and crashing and feedback.  At about the ten minute mark, my five year-old son said, “I like this song daddy, it sounds like monsters crashing through a small hole.”  I couldn’t agree more.

[READ: March 7, 2011] “Honor”

Golly, this story is dark.  How’s this for an opener: “My father was supposedly dead, and I found out only years later that he’d left walked out when I was eighteen months old….”  Yipes.

And I’ll say that the story doesn’t get any brighter.

So the narrator, born in the late 50s, tells the story of her mother raising a daughter (with the help of her mother who lives close by), and somehow making ends meet.  Of course she would never even consider moving back home with her mom, but she is happy to have her so close.

The mother and the narrator are strong-willed and hard to stop.  And when they are on the same side, they are formidable together. But when they disagree with each other (which they did pretty much all the time once she was a teen), it was tough being in their house.

The story unveils a plot about half way through.  The plot concerns her Aunt Andy.  Aunt Andy is her father’s brother’s wife.  And she comes to stay with them for a period of time.  In the past, Andy was shy but a little superior.  Her husband is a used car salesman and quite wealthy.  But on this visit she is pale and visibly shaken.  She is quiet and doesn’t mention her son at all.  In the past, her son was a real jerk, so she’s somewhat relieved that the boy isn’t staying with them.

Andy won’t say what the problem is and her mother refuses to tell her anything serious.  But even at the young age the narrator knows something is wrong.  And then there’s the trial. (more…)

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John Brandon–Arkansas (2008)

Posted in Adventure, Boredom, Death, Drugs, Gangsters, John Brandon, McSweeney's, Short Books, Unlikable main character, Violence, Wavves on March 15, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: WAVVES-“Post Acid” (2010).

Wavves’ King of the Beach CD made many Top Ten of 2010 lists.  I listened to a track somewhere and wasn’t all that impressed.  Right now there’s a live show on NPR, which I listened to a bit (and which made me investigate them further).

They have a few songs on their My Space page and I really like this one.  It is short and fuzzy and catchy and cool.  It’s a fast blast of punk nonsense.  I have no idea what it’s about (and I rather like the weird break in the song where the singer can barely get words out).

I’m not sure if I’d listen to a whole record of them (although I love their hair).  But this was sure a fun track.

[READ: February 17, 2011] Arkansas

John Brandon did a pretty amazing thing with this book.  He took two rather unlikable characters and made them sympathetic and, eventually, compelling.  The unlikability may have come from the detached style of their introduction.  Each of the main characters is introduced separately with a brief anecdote that seems to end abruptly.  In fact, I wondered if it was going to be a series of brief character sketches and nothing more.  I’m thankful that that wasn’t the case since, each character’s “section” could have been a complete (but very unsatisfying) story.  When I saw more of Swin, I was pleased, even though I didn’t really “like” him.

First we meet Swin Ruiz, a very intelligent guy who makes it to college.  While in college a foolish mistake (resubmitting an essay to a teacher) costs him his scholarship, which essentially means he’s out of school.  He scams some money from the rich students and then takes off, leaving his family and his beloved younger sisters with their jerk of a stepfather.  From there, he drifts aimlessly until he meets a bartender who sets him up with someone to help “break the laws of the land.”

Kyle Ribb is the other main character. He’s a harder man, something of a bastard.  He tries to go legit by working in a bike store.  When that doesn’t pan out (the story of that is pretty funny) he reverts back to his “no boss” ways.  He eventually meets a guy who introduces him to Colin, a man with criminal connections.

The third character we meet differs from these two.  First, a date is given as an introduction (1974).  Second, the whole section is written in second person (“You are Ken Hovan”).  We learn about his life and his background and how, eventually, he took the nickname Frog and became a shop owner, a dealer of unusual merchandise (which begins with bootleg tapes and, naturally, transforms into drugs).

The story of Frog’s life from 1974 to the present intersperses the main story (which is really about Swin and Kyle).  And each time frame jump ties together some of the mysteries of the book (Frog, being the boss, ties the thread together).  And there are many mysteries.

Kyle and Swin move up the ranks of the ne’er-do-well scale, until they land a job in an underused state park in Little Rock, Ark.  They get a “legit” job manning the booth, checking visitors in and out, and cleaning up the brush, but their “real” job is to deliver packages to random locations in different states.  They drive a car to a parking lot, wait for a person to get in and then drive off in a different car with a package for the other end.  And that’s pretty much it. It’s obvious they’re doing illegal work, but they don’t ask questions and don’t know too many details.

Their boss at the park is Bright, a man who seems to really enjoy the park and genuinely likes to take care of it.  He is a middleman for Frog, but a rather benevolent one.  There are some other characters as well.  The first is Her, (that’s the only name she gives out), she gives Bright the details about the packages.  Bright’s boss at the park is Wendy, she knows what they do and receives a cut.  She only wears pink and wishes to be a painter.  She recites a quotes from a different painter before she leaves. (more…)

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Millard Kaufman–Misadventure (2010)

Posted in Death, Drugs, Marriage Trouble, McSweeney's, Millard Kaufman, Sex, Short Books, Threats, Violence, Virginity (Loss of) on March 13, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: PJ HARVEY-Dry (1992).

This first PJ Harvey album was a revelation in 1992.  It was angry and loud and awfully disconcerting. And, perhaps most importantly, it showed a strong woman, unafraid to point fingers at foolishness around her. (Yes, I miss the 90s).

It was also raw and abrasive and, at times, scary.  The opening track featured discordant music and vocals that were more than a little uncomfortable.  “O Stella” has more uncomfortable vocals with super cool and slightly off harmonies.  The guitar is a great distorted mass and the bass is low and heavy.  A great track.

“Dress” is one of the least abrasive tracks musically, which really lets the lyrics come to the fore. And her lyrics are wonderful throughout the disc–she attacks conventions of femininity and flips expectations.  And although “Dress” has a very simple chorus–just the line “If you put it on”–it is catchy as anything.

But it’s not all loud songs, either.  The wonderfully titled “Happy and Bleeding” features some intriguing quiet guitar work and whispered verses.  It grows in strength but never wails like the other songs.  For real wailing, “Sheela-na-Gig” is your song. Terrifically rocking and obscene, it’s a funny, clever awesome alt rock song.

Harvey experiments with falsetto (although nothing like she will on Let England Shake) on “Hair,” a cool twist on the Samson and Delilah story.  “Plants and Rags” makes exquisite use of a creepy violin to bring some extra sounds to an already cool song.

It’s a stunning debut and showed that Harvey was a fearless singer.

[READ: February 27, 2011] Misadventure

This is Millard Kaufman’s final novel (after the very cool Bowl of Cherries).  The Afterword (written by Kaufman’s son) seems to suggest that Millard actually wrote this back in the 60s.  There are elements of this book that make me thing that he did write it in the sixties (and then obviously updated particulars to make it contemporary).  It just feels circa the 60s and it feels like the book of a younger man (Kaufman was 92 when he died).

The story opens with a dead body and a real estate agent.  And it quickly develops into a tidy noir fiction with double-crossing and undermining and all kinds of interesting twists.  I don’t read noir or “mysteries” as a rule, so this is kind of a novel novel to me.  Accordingly, I can’t compare it to the genre. (more…)

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Peter Lerangis–The Sword Thief [The 39 Clues, Book Three] (2009)

Posted in Adventure, Airlines, All Songs Considered, Children's Books, Culture Shock, Eoin Colfer, It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad World, Peter Lerangis, Short Books, Technology, The Head and the Heart, Threats, Travel, TSA, Violence on March 10, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE HEAD AND THE HEART-“Winter Song” (2010).

Sarah intended to get this disc for me for Christmas.  But evidently Sub Pop bought out the disc and put it out of print.  It’s now available as a download.  But a personal email from Sub Pop headquarters said they’d be releasing the disc in physical format sometime in April.  (Yay!)

This is a beautiful folk song which features wonderful harmonies.  It’s a simple guitar-picked song.  It opens with a male vocalist who sounds very familiar (I can’t quite place who he sounds like), but the end of the verse has a beautiful, brief blast of multi-part harmony.  The second verse is by a different vocalist (he sounds close to the first, I only noticed he was different after a few listens). The final verse is by a female vocalist which comes as a wonderful surprise as her voice brings a whole new shape to the sound.

The harmonies continue throughout the song and really flesh it out.  There’s not a lot to the song itself: a simple verse/chorus structure, but the execution and vocals are really lovely.

[READ: February 21, 2011] The Sword Thief

I can’t believe it has been five months since I read Book Two of this series.  It wasn’t for lack of enjoyment, sometimes other books get in the way!  But now that I’ve jumped back in, I’m in for a while (I’ve already started book 4).

One thing that I wanted to point out before talking about the book itself, was the way the various destinations are described in the book.  While I haven’t been to all (or really any) of the locations described, I have seen enough (in books and online) to know that the authors aren’t simply placing the kids in a generic location that pretends to be a city.  They really try to give each environment a full-bodied realism.  And I hope that young readers can really appreciate the sights and smells of the different countries.  It’s especially effective in Egypt (in book 4), but Tokyo really comes to life and Korea, although not fully explored, really shows the rural regions well.  Maybe this will encourage people to travel, but if not at least it’s instructive that not every place looks the same.

What I especially liked about this book is that the kids form a (brief) alliance (or two).  The first two books emphasized how all of the different family lines were in such competition with each other for the clues.  And, obviously that is the point of the books.  But it would be very tedious to simply have them run from place to place being chased by the different families.  So in this one, the kids form an alliance with Alistair Oh.  Better than that though is that Lerangis gives a detailed background of Alistair which makes him a more sympathetic, human character (even if we don’t fully trust him). (more…)

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Jonathan Goldstein–Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bible! (2009)

Posted in Anachronisms, Bible, Canadian Content, Death, Demons, Fables, Food, Funny (ha ha), History, Humiliation, Jonathan Goldstein, Marriage Trouble, Phish, Pregnancy, Religion, Sex, Short Story, Violence on March 8, 2011| 2 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK : PHISH-Live Bait: Vol 2 (2010).

Phish has been releasing live concert downloads  for years now.  And now that they’ve started touring again, they have a whole bunch of new ones.  I’m not going to be downloading new shows, (I have a  bunch of old ones that I really never listen to).  But what I like is that they are giving away a few tracks from these shows.  And what I love is that they’re calling the freebies, Live Bait.

This set is a few tracks from shows recorded in August of 2010.  There’s nine tracks  ranging from 90 seconds (“NO2” ) to 17 minutes (“Twenty Years Later”).

Although this show is from 2010, this bait contains only two songs from their last album, Joy. The older songs are fan favorites (“Wilson, “Possum”) and weird interludes (“Kung”).  The band sounds fresh and really into what they’re doing and the old songs sound rejuvenated and fun.

Nevertheless, since most of the other live releases are older, it’s so nice to have the two new songs.  You can’t be choosy on a free sample, but I’d have loved to hear them do “Time Turns Elastic.”  If you’re new to Phish, this is a good place to get a free sample of their live shows.  Three volumes of bait have been released so far.

[READ: February 16, 2011] Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bible!

I discovered this book when I read the short story “Samson and Delilah in The Walrus.  I liked, but didn’t love, the short story, but I was intrigued enough to want to see how the other Bible stories would stack up.  And since we had the book on the shelf, I decided to check it out.

So this book is a retelling of several stories from the Old Testament.  What Goldstein does is create a backstory for these biblical characters who are really just sketches.  The stories are funny, serious, weird and often enjoyable.

The introduction is a very funny kvetch about at being a Jew and having dinner in the Grey Derby; waiting online for hours with so many other Jewish families, eating kosher food with your own family, fighting over the check, pointing fingers, calling each other names and, ultimately, leaving by 5:30 PM.  It made me laugh out loud in the best Woody Allen tradition.

With no real introduction, he moves right into his new versions of Bible stories.

The biblical stories that Goldstein updates include:

  • Adam and Eve
  • Cain and Abel
  • Noah and the Ark
  • The Tower of Babel
  • Jacob and Esau
  • The Golden Calf
  • Samson and Delilah
  • King David
  • part 1: Goliath
  • part 2: Bathsheba
  • part 3: Absalom
  • Jonah and the Big Fish
  • My Troubles (A Work in Progress, by Joseph of N–) (more…)

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Margaret Atwood–“Warlords” (The Walrus, March 2005)

Posted in Canadian Content, Canadian Music, Flash Fiction, Margaret Atwood, Short Story, The Tragically Hip, The Walrus, Violence, War on March 5, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE TRAGICALLY HIP-Music @Work (2000).

I tend to dismiss this Hip record for two reasons: the cover is pathetic and I don’t like the title.  Of course, the title track is catchy as anything, and, in reality, the whole record stands up quite well.

Music @Work rocks harder than Phantom Power did, although clearly The Hip are in a new mode of music making–no longer lengthy emotive tracks, now the make shorter, poppier tracks that explore what would have to be called their gentler side.  “Stay” is a very simple acoustic guitar track with maybe a bit of keyboards, but Downie’s voice is mixed so high it’s practically like a spoken word track (only catchy).

There’s a lot of songs that, while not brilliant, are catchy and very toe tapping like “The Completists.”  As I described their earlier stuff, this disc is above average rock, and this is a more adult-alternative rock than their earlier raw rock.    But there are a few louder rocking songs too: “Freak Turbulence” is a fast rocker  that comes in at under 3 minutes.  “Train Overnight” is a return to a somewhat rawer sound and “Wild Mountain Honey” has a great opening riff and some unexpected stops and starts.

Despite my negative thoughts about this record, listening to it again made me realize just how good it is.

[READ: February 15, 2011] “Warlords”

This story continues with The Walrus‘ flash fictions.  Again, I don’t see this story as being in the tradition of Flash Fiction so much as just being a very short story.  Of course, as with any good flash fiction, this story packs a ton of information in to a half a page.

The story is all about Warlords.  Duh.  But rather than looking at the warlord himself, Atwood looks at the people who live under a warlord.  Those who can work for him or those (women, bankers, writers) who will never be able to.  She then peels away the layers of the warlord’s minions until we reach the inner circle.

And what happens to the inner circle when a warlord is deposed?  Is that guy sweeping garbage a former member? (more…)

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Sam Lipsyte–The Ask (2010)

Posted in Boredom, Corporate skewering, Drinking, Drugs, Funny (ha ha), Humiliation, Kate Bush, Marriage Trouble, Meta, PJ Harvey, Rasputina, Sam Lipsyte, Set at School, Smarty Pants, The Four Lads, Universities, Violence on March 2, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: PJ HARVEY-Let England Shake (2011).

I’ve listened to this disc several times online; I have no details about the recording.  There’s samples, but I don’t know what they are and I can’t really tell what all the lyrics are (it’s obvious she’s pretty angry, but the details are lost to me).

The first question for me on hearing this disc is what happened to PJ Harvey’s voice?  It comes as such a shock when you compare it to Dry.  But once I accepted that this is not the PJ Harvey of Rid of Me, I listened to it as a new artist and I really like it.  But it’s a weird record to be sure.

The title track is played on an autoharp (!).  In fact the autoharp is a dominant instrument here.  It’s got a cool melody and, once you accept that she sounds like the singer from Rasputina, you can really appreciate what’s going on.

The second track, “The Last Living Rose,” returns somewhat to the PJ of old (the opening “God damn” sounds like she’s about to bust out some good-ol’ invective).  And there are guitars, but the music is upbeat (as are the vocal melodies) and there’s even a horn!  “The Glorious Land” has samples from the cavalry (I can see the horses riding across the plains) and a cool, slinky guitar (or is that the autoharp?).  There’s male vocals in the middle of the song, and it makes for disconcerting harmonizing (especially when PJ,’s voice ratchets up the weirdness and sounds more like Kate Bush).  But musically this song is great, it’s got a wonderful 80’s alt-rock feel.

“The Words That Maketh Murder” also has horns and some interesting male vocals chanting the lyrics.  This has one of the least subtle lyrics I’ve heard in a long time, although the re-imagining of the “Summertime Blues” refrain is pretty genius.

“All and Everyone” opens with more autoharp, and I think I’m realizing that the autoharp is what I think of as the interesting guitar sound (this song opens like a Smiths’ ballad.)  There’s more horns on this track which adds a weird dimension of sadness to it.  “On Battleship Hill” is a fast but delicate track in which PJ pulls out an astonishing falsetto–completely unexpected.  After the first verses, the rest of the song has, again, a kind of slinky 60s vibe.  “England” brings out the Kate Bush voice in PJ again.  This is a very delicate song, the music is mixed so low in the background that it feels like acapella–I guess Harvey has grown much more confident in her voiuce.  The music builds and builds though and there’s an unexpected middle eastern sounding vocal in the background.

“In the Dark Places” brings out Harvey’s guitar (in this case the Harvey is Mick Harvey, I believe) and her lower register vocals. While “Bitter Branches” is probably the loudest song on the disc, with a bunch of screamed vocals.  It’s rather startling considering the rest of the disc, but it’s nice to know just how much fire PJ still has.

“Hanging in the Wire” is another delicate song, with quiet pianos and Harvey’s sedate voice.  “Written on the Forehead” returns to that middle eastern vibe (“people throwing dinars at the belly dancers”) and that Kate Bush vocal–the backing vocals remind me of Peter Gabriel.  The album ends with “The Colour of the Earth.”  It’s the most disconcerting song of the bunch becuase it opens with a male singer (John Parrish?) singing what sounds like an old trad song (the melody is very traditional).  Then PJ joins in and makes the song her own.

It’s obvious that the lyrics are the main aspect of this disc, and I know that I’m missing something by not having them. I’m also missing a lot by not knowing all that much about England’s history.  It sounds like she has a lot of gripes with Eng-a-lund, and I’m curious to know what she’s on about.  But more than that, I’m totally hooked by the music.  It’s a great reinvention of a great artist.

[READ: February 9, 2011] The Ask

I was planning to read nothing except books from the pile by my bed for the foreseeable future.  And then, as if calling to me, I saw this book, which I was planning to read eventually, on a display right in front of me called Booklist Editor’s Choice (a new display for our library).  I stared at it for three hours and just had to check it out.

And I’m glad I did.  For the most part I really enjoyed this book, it was quite funny and the main character, kind of a schlub, was completely relatable.  I say for the most part because I felt like it dragged a bit about 2/3 of the way through (more on that later).  But its possible that it dragged because the first half of the book was just fantastic–fast paced and clever with lots of wonderfully funny lines (more on that later too).  And a setting that I found very entertaining.

The story is about Milo Burke. He is married to Maura and they have a going-on-four-year-old boy Bernie who is nothing if not precocious.  The titular ask concerns Bernie’s job.  He works for a small arts college in New York (which he called Mediocre University).  His job is to basically ask (hence the title) rich people for money for the college. We see him in his office as the book opens and we meet the rest of the staff: the surprisingly unslacker slacker Hubert (with whom Milo shares space and ribald jokes…this section is the funniest; many paragraphs end with sentences that hilariously undermine what he just described.

We often called it, with what we considered a certain amount of panache, the Mediocre University at NewYork City.  By we, I mean Horace and I.  By often, I mean once (4).

His supervisor is Vargina.  (This name, which is obviously over the top and childish and which I absolutely laughed at and then felt was maybe too easy of a laugh, has a great origin story and is really never not funny no matter how often you see it).  Milo has obscene fantasies about Vargina, but he is a (somewhat) happily married man and would not cheat on his wife.

He’s not very good at his job, but the other askers do alright so his job is safe.  Until, that is, he insults the daughter of one of the university’s biggest donors and he is summarily let go, without severance.  And then we get to see a lot about his home life. (more…)

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Jonathan Goldstein–“Samson and Delilah” (The Walrus, October 2004)

Posted in Anachronisms, Bible, Canadian Content, Canadian Music, Death, Fables, Funny (ha ha), Jonathan Goldstein, Short Story, The Tragically Hip, The Walrus, Violence on February 26, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: TRAGICALLY HIP-Phantom Power (1998).

The last couple of Hip albums were pretty intense, and it seems like the live album seems to cured them of their need for raucousness. And so Phantom Power follows with a much less intense collection of songs.

The first three songs are somewhat loud and rocking, but they lack any of the twists and turns that the previous records had.  Rather they are pretty straightforward rock tracks.  “Poets” is catchy and fun to sing along to, with a good guitar intro.  And “Something On” is similarly rocking.  But after that the disc changes.

There’s a lot more folk and acoustic guitars here.  It’s an unexpected direction, especially when you figure that their first albums were so raw sounding.  In some ways that makes the album disappointing.

But what they have removed in intensity they have made up in subtler ways.  Take the cool harmonies on “Membership.”  I’ve always found their backing harmonies to be slightly off, usually in an interesting way, but the harmonies are perfected on this song, where they are more of an echo of Downie’s vocals which add a new sound to the song.

There’s a really fun rocking song about hockey (among other things) in “Fireworks,” although for all of its speed, it’s a very poppy track–there’s very little bass evident on the track (or most of the disc).  And it speeds along just as catchy as can be.

I have to wonder if “Vapour Trails” had any influence on Rush’s decision to name their comeback album Vapor Trails.  Probably not, but it’s fun to think about (and it is probably the heaviest song on this disc).

But “Bobcaygeon” is the obvious highlight (although it’s even better live)–the bridge into the chorus is sublime.  It’s one of their more mellow tracks, but there are cool twists and turns throughout.  Second is “Escape is at Hand for the Travellin’ Man” an uptempo but by no means rocking number that propels itself along on a simple riff and engaging lyrics.

I tend to forget about this album because it is not so intense, but listening to it again, I’m reminded not to overlook this album, even if it’s not a hit-worthy as some of their others.

[READ: February 8, 2011] “Samson and Delilah”

This story is a retelling of the Samson and Delilah biblical story.  I knew the original story pretty well, but I didn’t know that Samson was blinded (which he was).

This retelling is more contemporary (in langauge) and it is somewhat funnier (although it’s obviously not a funny story in the end).  Goldstein has added aspects that make it funny: anachronisms and such.  But he also imbues Samson (and Samson’s father) with characteristics that aren’t in the original. (more…)

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Cory Doctorow–A Place So Foreign and 8 More (2003)

Posted in Anachronisms, Canadian Content, Canadian Music, Corporate skewering, Cory Doctorow, Death, Drugs, End of the World, Free Speech, Funny (strange), Guster, Huh?, Moneen, Sci-fi, Set at School, Short Story, Technology, The Future, Threats, Time Travel, Violence, Walt Disney World on February 25, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: MONEEN-The World That I Want to Leave Behind (2010).

I’ve liked Moneen’s discs; they played an interesting mix of grungey noisey rock and incredibly poppy emo.  And their song titles were really long and often funny (“The Frightening Reality Of The Fact That We Will All Have To Grow Up And Settle Down One Day,” “There Are A Million Reasons For Why This May Not Work… And Just One Good One For Why It Will”).

The first sign that The World I Want to Leave Behind is different is that their song titles are all really short.  The longest one is the title of the album–which is the shortest song: a 2 minute quiet intro that features some noisy guitars at the end.   The rest are 1-3 words long.  Now, perhaps you can’t judge a band by that; however, their music, like thier song titles, has eschewed complexity and embraced pop.  (“Believe,” “Waterfalls,” “Lighters”).

Okay Moneen always had this component to it.  So it’s not like suddenly the band is all pop.  Take “Are We Really Happy with Who We are Right Now?” from the album of the same name .  The song is all emo vocals (including harmonies) but the music is punky and noisy.  It’s also got a lot of dissonance.  Similarly, “The Start to this May be the End to Another” (from their debut), opens with really blasting noise and then turns into a heavy emo track with loud and quiet sections.  They are certainly poppy, but there’s at least nods to noise.

This album removes all of that noise and chaos and settles into to some tried and true emo.  If you hate emo, you will hate this album.  There’s virtually no dissonance on the disc at all.

Okay, that’s not entirely true.  The second song, “Hold That Sound” opens with some noiy aggressive guitars (and interesting noisy effects) and “The Long Count” has some noisy heavy opening chords which propel through the track.  But unlike earlier records, the noise gets pushed to the background pretty quickly.  “The Monument” also shows some remnants of heaviness–there’s even screaming vocals at one point.

And yet, the aforementioned “Wateralls” and “Lighters” sound like Guster-lite (and I like Guster quit a bit).

The final song, “The Glasshouse” does rock pretty hard (although the harmonies are all still there and the emo certainly seeps in by the end with a piano break and the final 2 minutes being all gang vocals).

Okay so in fairnes to the band, they haven’t smoothed off all the rough edged, but the polished bits are really polished now.  The thing is, I kind of like emo, so despite my tone, I don’t really dislike this record.  I’m always diasppointed when a band moves more commerical, especially if they cut off their more interesting bits, but Moneen make good emo (if you allow that such a thing exists).  I don’t like all emo bands, but there’s still enough interesting stuff here to keep me coming back to it.  In fact, for all of its poppiness, “Believe” is a really fantastically catchy alt rock song which should be in heavy rotation somewhere, if it’s not already.

[READ: February 13, 2011] A Place So Foreign and 8 More

When I saw that Cory Doctorow had a book of short stories out, I was intrigued. I’ve enjoyed two of his books quite a bit, so what could he do with short fiction?

This is some of his earliest work and I found it a mixed bag.

The first story “Craphound” was great (and the origin of his website name).  It concerns going to flea markets and buying all kinds of crap.  When you do it a lot, you become a craphound.  But when you take a fellow craphound’s crap of choice for yourself, you break the unwritten rule.  That’s all well and good.  But in this story one of the craphounds is an alien, like from another planet.  And what he trades for his crap is pretty wild.  But why would he break the unwritten rule?  The story is a fun look at what happens when extra-terrestrials are a part of your life.

“A Place So Foreign” was my absolute favorite story in the book, and one of my favorite short stories in quite some time.  I’m happy to say that I read it last, so it totally ended the book on a high note. Despite the cover picture with an “alien” hand holding a suitcase, the story has nothing to do with that at all. (more…)

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