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Archive for the ‘Yuck!’ Category

John Layman & Rob Guillory–Chew: Volume One: Taster’s Choice (2009)

Posted in "Weird Al" Yankovic, Adventure, Death, Food, Graphic Novel, John Layman, Justin Timberlake, Lonely Island, Rob Guillory, Saturday Night Live, Snoop Dog, Violence, Yuck! on November 1, 2011| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: LONELY ISLAND-Turtleneck & Chain (2011).

I liked “Lazy Sunday” quite a lot, but I didn’t feel compelled to get the album.  Then, when I heard Samberg on NPR, it made quite a compelling case for this second album.  So I decided to check it out.

Most comedy albums are juvenile, so let’s get that out of the way.  This is juvenile.  And, as with most SNL-derived humor, it’s a one note joke that gets stretched out.  The good news is that very few of the songs stretch too long (only one is more than three minutes) and the music itself is quite good–which allows for repeatedly listens.

The opening, “We’re Back!” is really quite funny.  It’s all about how the three guys have really tiny penises.  Ha ha, but it’s delivered with such great gangsta rap style that it is very, very funny.  “Mama” is a wonderful tribute to the singers’ Moms.  The song is interrupted by said mother over and over.  On this one, the joke might go on too much, but overall, it’s very funny.

The longest song is “Jack Sparrow” and it is one of the best ones on the disc.  It features Michael Bolton (!) singing his heart out about his love for the Pirates of the Caribbean movies–which is funny enough, but the guys are rapping behind him about something else entirely.  They keep trying to stop Bolton from hijacking the song.  It’s very well done (and man, say what you will, Bolton can belt out a song).

“Attracted to Us” goes on a bit too long (and at less than 2 minutes that’s a bad sign) and “Rocky” in which one of the dorky guys talks about fighting Rocky (ala The Fresh Prince) is a super long SNL skit (which is not a compliment).

“Turtleneck & Chain” features Snoop Dog and is just fantastic–I love hearing Snoop Dog rap this geek shit.  “Shy Ronnie 2: Ronnie & Clyde” also works very well with Rihanna on vocals.  The song itself is catchy and the joke, when it finally comes, is really good.

“Motherlover” is a sequel to “Dick in a Box” (“this is the second best idea we ever had”) and Justin Timberlake continues to impress me in his new role as a funny guy.  This is a gross song but it’s really crazy catchy (Timberlake must have written the chorus).

One of my favorite songs on the disc is “Threw It on the Ground.”  Musically, I think it’s fantastic and lyrically it is pretty funny.  I wish that they had had some better examples of things to throw on the ground (the cell phone joke is lame and they get kind of lazy by the end), but I get this song stuck in my head a lot.  Another song guaranteed to stay in your head forever is “I Just Had Sex,” a childish and silly song that is outrageously catchy.  And if it’s in your head it won’t leave.  (And yes it’s funny).

“Japan” is a crazy and funny look at Japanese culture while “After Party” is a bit one note.  “No Homo” on the other hand brings in a full circle hardcore joke that is at once offensive and hilarious. 

“The Creep” is pretty unsuccessful even with the help of Nicki Minaj–the video helps a little, but not enough.  As with most rap albums, the skits are the weakest link.  Without a song behind them the skits are good for one or two listens and some not even that (“Falcor vs Atreyu”?  “My Mic”? these wouldn’t even be funny if they were improvised, and yet they seem very deliberately planned–boy I hope there wasn’t more than one take).

Overall, this is a funny rap parody/tribute album.  It’s obvious that the guys love rap and they are quite successful in their stylings.  None of it works as well as “Weird Al”‘s “White and Nerdy” but honestly whatever could?  But “Weird Al” is PG, and Lonely Island fills in as the adult pranksters.

[READ: October 28, 2011] Chew: Volume One

Sarah gave me this book after reading the recommendation on The Hub.  She said it was really good but it was really gross.  And that’s quite an accurate assessment.

One thing that I liked about this book was that it had not one but two really cool ideas that run through the series.  Either one would be a compelling-enough premise, but putting them together makes for an excellent story with lots of possibilities.

The story is about Tony Chu, who is a policeman.  He is also cibopathic, which means that when he eats anything (except beets for some reason), he instantly knows the history of that food: eating fruits and vegetables shows him the tree it grew on and how it was harvested;  eating meat, well, just let your imagination go on that one.  That’s a pretty great premise.  But when he gets a murderer’s blood on his lips and he instantly knows the names and locations of all of his victims, well, that ups the intensity (and the grossness).

The second great premise is that the government has outlawed chicken because of the avian flu.  Millions of people died from the flu and now only chicken-substitutes are used.  There is now a black market for real chicken, including speakeasys, and the FDA is hot on the heels of all traffickers.  And yet, there is a small group of rebels who believe that the whole avian flu thing is a sham (including Tony’s brother Chow).  They don’t postulate why the sham was created, but they are out to set the record straight. 

Put these two ideas together and you get a hell of a story. (more…)

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Arthur Bradford–Dogwalker (2001)

Posted in Arthur Bradford, Culture Shock, Deafness, Death, Dogs, Drugs, Funny (strange), Huh?, Kiss, McSweeney's, Oddities, Short Books, The Beatles, Unlikable main character, Yuck! on October 12, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: KISS-Rock and Roll Over (1976).

After Alive!, Kiss released what I think of as the cartoon albums.  These next three discs all had cartoon covers, which also coincides with their huge ascent into fame.  I tend to think of Destroyer and Love Gun more than this one (maybe full-bodied pictures are more memorable than just their faces), even though this one has a huge share of important Kiss songs like “I Want You” (which has an amazingly long version on Alive II). 

I never really liked “Take Me,” there’s something about the chanting backing vocals that irks me (although “Put your hand in my pocket, grab onto my rocket” is one of my favorite Kiss couplets).  But “Calling Dr. Love” is a wonderful twisted song (the falsetto backing vocals are so doo wop, it’s funny to contemplate the band’s musical direction at this point).  I loved this song so much it even features in one of my first short stories. 

As an eight year old, I could never figure out what Gene would be doing in the “Ladies Room”–since he was a boy and all.  Naiveté is a wonderful thing to have as a young person listening to Kiss–I had no idea what was going on in most of the songs–I wonder if my parents bothered to listen to the lyrics at all.

I also never really liked “Baby Driver” all that much–I don’t know if it’s Peter’s voice, or that I can’t figure out what the hell this song is about but it’s still just okay to me–although I like the guitars at the end.   I love the solo in “Love ‘Em Leave ‘Em”–although the sentiment is not the best.  Of course, the sentiment in “Mr. Speed” cracks me up: “I’m so fast, that’s why the ladies call me Mr. Speed.”  Did that mean something different in 1976?

“See You in Your Dreams” was covered by Gene on his solo album, and I think I like that version better (it’s more theatrical).  Although this one has very interesting use of Beatlesesque harmonies.  “Hard Luck Woman” is wonderful song, and I do like Peter’s voice here, yes.  But who the hell is Rhett?  “Making Love” ends the disc.  I like the break in the middle and the awesome guitar solo.  Also, Paul’s vocals have some cool effects on them. 

This is a fun album.  Even the songs I don’t love are still songs that I like quite a bit.  It’s a nice contrast from the bombast of Destroyer.  The amazing thing is that both this album and Destroyer are barely over 30 minutes long.  Were they making albums so frequently that they didn’t have any more songs, or were they just following the Beatles model: make an album every 7 months to stay in the public’s eye?

[READ: October 2, 2011] Dogwalker

I can’t believe how quickly I read this book.  I wasn’t even planning on reading the whole thing just yet, but I started the first story and it was so quick to read and so enjoyable that I couldn’t stop.  I finished the whole book in a couple of hours (it helps that a number of stories are barely 4 pages and that it’s barely 150 pages).  The title of the book is something of a mystery as there are a lot of dogs in the stories, but walking is about the furthest thing from what happens to them.  I was also somewhat surprised to see how many of these pieces I had already read (Bradford was in five of the first six McSweeney’s issues). 

This collection is certainly not for everyone.  In fact when I recounted the story “Dogs,” Sarah was disgusted and said she would never read the story.  Bradford definitely pushes some boundaries, but they’re mostly in an attempt to find humor, so I think that’s cool. Sarah even admitted that the end of “Dogs” sounded funny (although she was still disgusted).  The two things I found odd about the stories were that two of them featured a three-legged dog, which seems a little lazy to me–although I don’t know what the dog might signify.  And two of them featured someone or something singing unexpectedly and the narrator getting a tape recorder to surreptitiously save this special recording.  Again, it’s a really unusual thing to happen at all, but to have that happen in two stories?

Aside from those little complaints, the stories were fun, funny and certainly weird. (more…)

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Suzanne Toczyski–“Jean-Baptiste Labat and the Buccaneer Barbecue in Seventeenth-Century Martinique” (Gastronomica, Winter 2010)

Posted in 18th Century, All Songs Considered, Big Books, Essays, Excerpt, Fishing, Food, Gastronomica, History, Jean-Baptiste Labat, Linda Sue Park, Los Campesinos!, Memoirs, Palm Worm, Pirates, Religion, Suzanne Toczyski, Travel, Yuck! on September 22, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK–LOS CAMPESINOS!-“By Your Hand” (2011).

I’ve enjoyed Los Campesinos!’s records in the past and I’m pretty excited about the prospect of a new release.  This song doesn’t deviate too far from their previous releases although to my ear it sounds a bit more musical (more instruments, more vocals) and less abrasive.  The basic elements are still there:great lyrics delivered in a more or less spoken way, followed on its heels by big shouty sections (and the whole band seems to be shouting along on this one).

This song also feels a little warmer, although the lyrics “by your hand is the only end I’ve foreseen” is either really dark or really naughty depending on how well it correlates to the verses.  Regardless, the chorus is catchy and fun to sing and the lyrics are wonderfully twisted.  Los Campesinos! have done it again.

And here’s the video.

[READ: September 16, 2011] “Jean-Baptiste Labat and the Buccaneer Barbecue in Seventeenth-Century Martinique”

I was interested in this article because it talked about the boucan and the buccaneer, and both of these things were mentioned in Book 9 of The 39 Clues.  It was a weird sort of coincidence that the boucan which I had never heard of before should appear in two things that I read about week apart (and then this weekend the Pa Renaissance Faire was pyrate themed!).   I was also interested because of the way this article was presented in the email to us: “if you have ever wondered on what foods a seventeenth-century missionary from the island of Martinique dined, check out this article from Gastronomica. (Hint: They include manatee, lizard, and parakeet)” made it a must-read.

While the article does, indeed make mention of these foodstuffs, it is by no means the extent of the article.  Rather, Toczyski looks at what Labat, a French priest and a missionary, wrote in his extensive chronicle about his stay in the Caribbean.  In particular, she focuses on the amazing breadth and depth of his gastronomical accounts (which includes details about all the meals they ate en route (the ship was amazingly well stocked–they even had a garden on board, which was under guard day and night (!); and then on the island he also talks in loving detail (with recipes) of all of the native dishes that he would eventually consume (including turtles, frogs and the palm worm (see picture at right (the picture and an awesome description of eating the palm worm is here at Boots in the Oven, at the bottom of the page).

(more…)

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Paul Theroux–“Incident in the Oriente” (Harper’s, July 2011)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Bob Mould, Harper's, Hüsker Dü, Paul Theroux, Short Story, Sugar, Threats, Yuck! on July 25, 2011| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: BOB MOULD-Sasquatch Festival, May 28, 2011 (2011).

I loved Hüsker Dü.  I loved Sugar (a tad less).  I loved Mould’s Workbook.  And then I kind of loss interest in the guy.  He recently wrote an autobiography, which I would consider reading, but musically, I assumed he was done.

So I wasn’t even that interested in listening to his set (shame on me).  This turns out to be a really cool set in which it’s just Bob and his electric guitar.  He plays a varied set of songs from throughout his career.  He plays some of his hits (“See a Little Light,” “Hoover Dam”) but mostly he plays interesting non-hits (“Chartered Trips” (!!), “I Apologize”).  (Is it possible that Grant Hart wrote all of Hüsker’s big hits?)

The most amazing thing about the set is Bob himself.  He sounds so cool and chilled out (even though I think he was like the very first opening act of the concert–which is a pretty shitty time slot).  He seems to be really happy playing (hearing him respond to a request with “I forgot how to play that one” is pretty darn funny.)  Of course, a little later when he says “What’s that?  I’m trying?” he almost sounds like Al Bundy.

But then, look at him, he’s an old man now.  And sure, he’s been playing music forever, so gosh, he’s got to be super old, right?  What?  He was born in 1960?  He’s nine years older than me?  Oh good grief.  So, wait the first Hüsker Dü album came out when he was 22?  He really crammed a lot of music into just a few years.  Not bad, Bob.

And yes, I’m fully invested in relistening to all the great music you’ve made now.  Thanks, Sasquatch.

[READ: July 13, 2011] “Incident in the Orient”

This very short story features a dead dog. I’m getting that out of the way since I know some people won’t read any further once they know that.

I rather liked the brevity of this story, how Theroux is able to cram a lot of information and a lot tension into just a couple of pages.  The story is also a strange little onion of a tale, with the narrator working for a man (Moses) who is a sort of mercenary construction boss.  The narrator gives a lot of insight into Moses, although he also admits that he doesn’t really know the man very well (how could anyone know him).

He has done work in various war-torn countries and has effectively built a crew out of a small group of devoted men, mingled with local help.  The most fascinating thing is that Moses is a short man with a lisp and yet he commands the respect of everyone who works for him.  He takes no shit, but he pays well and uses local materials (including tearing down materials from destroyed buildings if necessary).   (more…)

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Jun’ichirō Tanizaki–“The Gourmet Club” (Lucky Peach, No. 1: Ramen: Summer 2011)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Black Mountain, Food, Funny (strange), Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, Lucky Peach, Magic, McSweeney's, Neil Gaiman, Paul McCarthy, Short Story, Translation, Yuck! on July 17, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: BLACK MOUNTAIN-Live at Sasquatch, May 30, 2011 (2011).

The previous Black Mountain live show I downloaded from NPR was a real disappointment.  For me the major problem was Amanda Webber’s voice–she applied a really harsh vibrato to the end of every single line.  It was so pronounced it sounded almost like a stutter.  I found it very distracting.

She doesn’t do that here, which automatically makes this set 100 times better (she has a minor vibrato on a few places, which is totally fine).  This Sasquatch concert covers songs from all three of their albums, which really showcases the diversity they explore within their trippy, space-rock, metal sound.  It works like a (brief) greatest hits for the band.

And the band sounds comfortable and fresh in this live setting (the guitars are fantastic and the keyboards add a wonderful spacey feel to the mix).  The two tracks of “Wucan” and “Tyrants” is particularly amazing; it’s interesting that they play four songs from their middle album and only three from their most recent.

Regardless, this release has won back my faith in Black Mountain live.

[READ: July 13, 2011] “The Gourmet Club”

I’d never heard of Tanizaki before and I haven’t really read that much Japanese fiction.  This translation by Paul McCarthy was really fantastic, and I never felt like I was reading a translation.

When I started this story (the first fiction from Lucky Peach), I was concerned that it was going to be the same kind of story as Neil Gaiman’s “Sunbird” (I realize “Sunbird” was published much later than “The Gourmet Club” originally written in 1919), but I’m glad it didn’t.

Essentially, this story focuses on five Japanese men who live to eat.  They are Epicurean to the highest degree, eating only the best at least once a day and often to bursting.  They go through all of the restaurants in Japan, traveling across the island to find new foods.  But they soon reach the end of their new food options. (more…)

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Steven Heighton–“The Dead Are More Visible” (The Walrus, December 2007)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Beck, Boredom, Canadian Content, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Death, Fears, Hockey, KEXP 90.3 FM--Seattle, WA, Short Story, Steven Heighton, Threats, Violence, Yuck! on June 15, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: CHARLOTTE GAINSBOURG-KEXP in studio May 11, 2010 (2010).

Charlotte Gainsbourg is a fascinating individual.  Between her acting and her singing, she’s had quite a life.  And even moreso since she had a near fatal accident.

That accident formed the nexus of her album IRM.  And this interview and performance is done in support of that disc.  IRM was made with Beck.  Beck’s not here, and the songs are more stripped down, but they sound really good in this format.

Gainsbourg sings the Beck-sung-on-IRM “Heaven Can Wait” and really makes it her own.  The other three songs here work very well in this more acoustic setting.  “Me and Jane Doe” is practically acoustic already and “Time of the Assassins” and “Trick Pony” are reworked very well.  And Charlotte is a charming interviewee as well.

It’s another excellent in-studio performance from KEXP.

[READ: March 31, 2011] “The Dead Are More Visible”

I read all of The Walrus stories when I received the magazines.  I wondered when I would completely recognize a story when re-reading them now.  Well, this was the first one that I remembered parts of vividly.  And why not–there’s a search for a missing eye on an ice hockey rink.  That’s hard to forget.  However, I didn’t remember the ending and in fact, my memory added many more details than actually occurred in the story.

The beginning of the story, which is very different from what I just described, was less memorable but perhaps more interesting.  The story opens with a woman reflecting about her graveyard shift job.  In this case the job is literally a graveyard shift, because the park she works in has a graveyard within it. However, her job is not really scary–she is there to make the ice for the upcoming skating season.  It takes several nights of very cold weather and she must go out in all her gear and fill up the rink, several tousand litres of water at a time.

While the ice settles, her time is her own–to listen to music and read. She gets a few hundred pages read a night (dream job!)  She prefers romance and horror novels.  The introduction of horror novels into the story foreshadows a bit about the scene ewith the eye later on, although for this is not a horror story. (more…)

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Camilla Gibb–“The Principles of Exile” (The Walrus, July/August 2007)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Books about writers, Camilla Gibb, Canadian Content, Fears, Firewater, KEXP 90.3 FM--Seattle, WA, Letters to Cleo, Religion, Short Story, The Walrus, Violence, Yuck! on May 29, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: FIREWATER-Performance from KEXP, July 3, 2008 (2008).

I loved Firewater when their first two albums came out and I even saw them once open for Letters for Cleo (a great show by both bands).  Then I more or less lost touch with them.  And it turns out that lead Firewater dude Tod A. had been out of the country for a while.

The interview (and concert) with them details his distaste for the Bush administration and his decision to get the hell out of the country for a while.  So he spent three years traveling around India, Turkey, Pakistan and then returned with this album.  I wasn’t aware of any of that, or even that they had a new album out in 2008.

Firewater had a very cool (and reasonably original) sound when they came out back in 1996.  They had a middle eastern vibe even back then which they blended nicely with theatrical pomp and a whole lot of punk.  They threw everything together into a rollicking good time (even if the lyrics were very dark indeed).

The 2008 album The Golden Hour seems a bit more upbeat (touring the world did him good) although it hasn’t changed the overall style of the music.  This live set includes several new musicians for Firewater, and their array of skills (and instruments) is great.  But the most surprising thing to me is how friendly and jovial Tod A. is.  As I said, I knew the band as being kind of angry, so hearing him be fun (and inviting the KEXP volunteers to sing gloriously chaotic backing vocals on “Beirut”) is really cool.

In total the band does four songs: “Hey Clown,” “Electric City,” “6:45,” and “Borneo.”  I think the biggest surprise for me is how short the songs are.  Not punk short, but more like pop song length.  And super catchy as well.

It’s a welcome return to a great band.  Although I see they haven’t released anything else since 2008.

[READ: April 4, 2011] “The Principles of Exile”

This was a fascinating and very sad story which had multiple layers and went in many unexpected directions.  It was really great.

As the story opens, Manny is sent to get some “special” cheese from a shop.  The cheese is called halloumi, and the best kind is made in a bucket behind their counter.  He is sent for this cheese because his mother is making a special dinner.

The dinner is in honor of Monsieur Sarkis’s new book.  There was a fatwa leveled against Sarkis for his previous book.  And that previous book (naturally) went on to be a best seller.  Well, Manny’s father had the publishing rights to the book (normally his publishing house was on the verge of bankruptcy, so a huge best seller was a big deal for them).  They didn’t even mind the fatwa.

Until it started to affect them personally. (more…)

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Five Dials Number 5 (2009)

Posted in Advice, Alain de Botton, Alberto Fusi, All Songs Considered, Anthea Bell, Biography, Books about writers, Charles Baudelaire, Essays, Excerpt, Five Dials, Gail Armstrong, Howard Goldblatt, J.M.G. Le Clézio, James Attlee, Joe Dunthorne, Johannes Vermeer, Kurt Weill, Letters, Paul Wilson, PJ Harvey, Poetry, Roberto Bolaño, Roger Deakin, Samuel Beckett, Short Story, Violence, W.G. Sebald, Yuck! on May 21, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: PJ HARVEY-Live at the Warfield Theater, San Francisco, April 14, 2011 (2011).

NPR was given permission to share this PJ Harvey concert.  However, they were only allowed to share about half of it.  The show is fairly short to begin with (about 75 minutes) but the downloadable portion is barely 40 minutes.  It turns out that NPR was given the rights to all of the songs from the new album, Let England Shake.

Now, I have no idea how things like this work, why they are only given access to these songs as opposed to the other ones, or why an artist (or management) would not let her fans hear the ten or so other songs she played that night.  Legal restrictions are weird and usually stupid. But as I’ve mentioned before, you shouldn’t complain about free stuff.

So, what we get here is a spliced together concert (it sounds seamless, although they have removed all of the banter (if there was any)).  The album is played in its entirety (although we were not given “Written on the Forehead” which happens to be the song they are playing the most on the radio here), but it’s not played in order.  It was also interspersed with older songs “The Devil” and “Silence” from White Chalk, “The Sky Lit Up” and Angeline” from Is This Desire, “Pocket Knife” from Uh Huh Her, “Down by the Water” and “C’mon Billy” from To Bring Her My Love, (I’d like to hear how she handles the older songs, now that’s she’s singing primarily in the higher register).  And, “Big Exit” from Stories from the City.

It’s pretty clear that Harvey is no longer the young woman who made those first couple albums.  And she sounds strong and confident here.  It’s a great set; the autoharp never sounded better.

[READ: April 20, 2011] Five Dials Number 5

I have been enjoying all of the Five Dials, but this issue is easily my favorite so far.  The “theme” of this issue is translation.  Translators are the unheralded workers in literature, and while I have been trying to give them credit in my posts, I don’t always pay them enough attention (except when a translation is awkward or clunky).

But in addition to the theme (and the really cool interviews with some translators, I thought the fiction was outstanding and I loved Alain de Botton’s Advice column.  The whole issue was great. (more…)

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Yannick Murphy–Here They Come (2006)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Boredom, KEXP 90.3 FM--Seattle, WA, McSweeney's, Sex, The Head and the Heart, Unlikable main character, Unreliable narrator, Yannick Murphy, Yuck! on May 15, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE HEAD AND THE HEART-SXSW, March 18, 2011 (2011).

Just months after their in-studio session, The Head and the Heart played South by Southwest.  This set seems somehow louder than the in-studio (which seems a very common phenomenon–the bands just seems to be quieter in-studio somehow, even if they are playing hard, it still seems subdued, which isn’t bad at all, just odd).  So here, the band really lets loose (or maybe it’s because they’ve been playing no for six extra months?) and they sound like they’re really having fun.

Their sound is loud and (somewhat) chaotic, and it really suits them.  The set list is similar to the in-studio (they also play “Cats and Dogs” which segues into “Coeur d’Alene”).  “Ghosts” and “Lost in My Mind” are also here (“Lost” sounds great in this rambling, somewhat shambolic format).  They also play “Down in the Valley.”  Added to the set are “Winter Song” and “River and Roads.”  These two songs feature vocals by violinist Charity Thielin, and I have to admit I don’t love her voice.  Perhaps it’s in this context or that she is mixed a wee bit to loud (because I didn’t dislike her voice in the in-studio).  As I said, I haven’t heard the studio version yet, so I’ll chalk it up to a very large crowd.

But otherwise the set is outstanding, and I’m becoming a huge fan of the band.

[READ: March 28, 2011] Here They Come

I had been thinking about reading this book for a while (the blurbs on the back are quiet compelling) but I kept putting other McSweeney’s books in front of them (I had hoped to finish an entire stack of McSweeney’s novels before The Pale King came.  But it shipped two weeks early and threw off my plan).

I have read two pieces by Murphy in previous McSweeney’s issues, but looking back they didn’t prepare me for this strange story. And the strangest thing is the point of view of the narrator (but more on that later).

This is actually a simple enough story.  Set in New York over an unspecified time period (there’s a couple of winters and a couple of summers, but I’m not sure if it’s new seasons or flashbacks), the (as far as can tell) unnamed narrator girl leads a pretty crap existence.

Firs there is John, the hot dog vendor.  He’s a married man from a middle eastern country (his family is back there).  And basically the narrator lets him feel her up (for what it’s worth on a flat chested 13-year-old) for free hot dogs and candy bars.  She doesn’t seem to upset by the groping and keeps going back to pass the time with him.

Then there is her brother, an obnoxious boy who walks around in a silk dragon bathrobe all the time. When he is not smashing things with his guitar when he walks past the furniture, he is smashing things in his room or threatening to shoot himself with their old, unloaded gun.

Her mother works all the time but really can’t afford to take care of them or feed them.  And she says “Merde” night and day (she is French).  But worse is her mother’s mother, la mere, who stays with them from time to time.  la Mere seems like she has money but she never gives them any. (more…)

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Ryan Boudinot–The Littlest Hitler (2006)

Posted in BlackBook, David Mamet, Death, Dr. Who, Dungeons & Dragons, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Glengarry Glen Ross, Logan's Run, Marriage (Happy), Marriage Trouble, Nazis, PJ Harvey, Pregnancy, Religion, Ryan Boudinot, Set at School, Sex, Short Story, Technology, Violence, Yuck! on May 1, 2011| 2 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: PJ HARVEY-Uh Huh Her (2004).

After the sort of mellow, almost commercial release of Stories from the Sea, PJ Harvey throws the fans a left turn once again with Uh Huh Her.  It’s a heavy, raw album although not raw like Dry was.  It seems  simpler, somehow.  And I think it’s with this disc that you realize that every PJ Harvey record is going to be different.  It was apparent that she had a trajectory on those first few discs, but this one changes everything, and she proves that you’ll never know what’s going to come from her.

“The Life and Death of Mr Badmouth” has a very simple blues riff with kind of chanting (and occasional creepy backing vocals) by PJ.  While “Shame” adds more texture (melodica?) and some more washes of sound.  “Who the Fuck?” is a wonderfully vulgar and raw track with brutal guitars and overly loud vocals.  “Pocket Knife” is a buzzy but quiet track which feels like a demo (the guitar even seems out of tune), while “The Letter” has a great fuzzy guitar sound and a cool melody.

“The Slow Drug” is one of several slower pieces.  As with many of her quieter stuff this does nothing for me, although it’s a nice change on the disc.  “No Child of Mine” is a brief acoustic number.  It feels more like an excerpt or a transitional song than any actual song (being only a minute long).  It leads to the rocking “Cat on a Wall.”  “You Came Through”  mixes things up very nicely with a heavy percussion.  The effects in the song are really captivating.

“It’s You” is a slow piano-based song, while “The End” is a brief instrumental (more melodica).  And “The Desperate Kingdom of Love” is a dark ballad.  The oddest track is “Seagulls” which is a minute of actual seagulls squawking…an unusual addition for any disc.  The album ends with “The Darker Days of Me & Him.” It’s a quiet acoustic song which shows just how many different style she’s willing to experiment with even on one disc.  Even though to me this is a raw rocking disc, there are still a number of acoustic tracks as well.

This album feels like some kind of psychic purge.

[READ: March 31, 2011] The Littlest Hitler

I picked up this collection of stories because I enjoyed Boudinot’s story in the BlackBook collection very much.  I didn’t realize that that story was in fact part one of a two-part story (although part two bore no relation to part one, as you’ll see).  The story in BlackBook was funny and dark, but it didn’t prepare me for just how dark these stories would get.  And for the most part, it seemed like the darkness came at the very end; a surprise, a shock.   I admit i grew a little weary of the device by the end of the collection, although not all of the stories employed it, so there was some diversity. (more…)

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